Sun Aug 12 - Mt Saint Helens

  We had coffee and then took the shuttle back to the airport to get the rental car. The shuttle driver was from Louisiana and had the accent to go with it. He explain how great 5 Hour Energy drinks were as opposed to Red Bull, and he was not a young man. We heard the same thing a couple days later so something is up with that stuff. We rented a Subaru (official car of Vermont and Oregon) and called Beverly and Brett who were just getting up. Beverly is my neice who got married the month before. It was nice to see them "post wedding" and they seemed relaxed and settled in. We promised to come back the next weekend and then headed off to Mt Saint Helens.
This is an active volcano that blew it's top back in 1980. As a result, the entire area is starting to grow back, but between ash deposits and mud slides, the area is still dominated by grey rocky terrain. The mountain is still beautiful and it was nice to see it from the south side, which is a lot less traveled by tourists (that would be us). We headed back to Portland to go to our friend Pam's house. This is where we crashed last trip out and Pam also let me keep my bike in her garage for the last month.
Pam and her friend Dave were there and we had an enjoyable night catching up and watching more Olympics. The beemer looked just as I left it, ready to return home a week later other than sorta bald tires. I did a late night ride on one of Pam's bikes around the neighborhood. Lawns look pretty parched but I did not sense from conversations with people in Portland that the weather here was all that unusual. Their summer starts in July after the rainy stuff stops and it gets warm and dry. The weather for the coming week looks incredible and pretty much everybody we run into says we are lucky to get this stretch of upcoming weather here in the northwest. I hope our luck holds out.