Portland, Oregon

was the beginning of

My Far Out Far East Experience

 

Seattle, Washington

Before I flew to China, I planned a couple days to visit my 48th state (Washington) and 49th state (Oregon) in the United States.

Leave Atlanta 9 am, layover in the Minneapolis-Saint Paul, arrive Seattle, Washington 1pm

Rent a car.  See stuff:

 

• Washington State Capitol - I was at the Washington State Vietnam Veterans Memorial on Memorial Day. What an emotional moment to see people read the names carved into the marble wall.  I saw the POW/MIA flag that only flies on Memorial Day.

• Seattle Space Needle - I went to the top!

• Folk Festival - Lots of food, Baltic dancing

• Mount St. Helens National Volcanic Monument and Park - Wow!

 

 

I went to the top of the Seattle Space Needle

 

My picture from the top:

There was a festival happening!   I went to the 22^nd Annual Folk Life Festival .I watched a lot of Baltic Dancing.  It looked like a lot of fun!

 

My food of choice was SALAD.  Lots of SALAD.  I didn't want to risk getting sick in China, so I was not going to eat any salad in Asia. So I loaded up on salad for lunch, salad for dinner.  That would be my last fresh vegetables for awhile.

I stayed here:

Drive an hour South of Seattle to Olympia, Washington to see the Washington State Capitol.   

 

 

     

I was at the Washington State Vietnam Veterans Memorial on Memorial Day. What an emotional moment to see people read the names carved into the marble wall.

 

 

The POW/MIA flag only flies on Memorial Day.

 

From the capitol in Olympia, drive an hour south to Mount St. Helens National Volcanic Monument

 

Mount St. Helens Volcano Washington, United States.

The major volcanic eruption occurred in 8:30 am May 18, 1980

It was preceded by a two-month series of earthquakes and steam-venting episodes - 10,000 earthquakes were recorded in a small zone less than 1.6 miles directly below the bulge.

There was a magnitude 5.1 earthquake below the north slope and 10 seconds later, there was a landslide, travelled up to 155 miles per hour and moved across Spirit Lake's west arm.

Entire north face slid away creating the largest landslide ever recorded. Mount St. Helens was left with a crater on its north side.
Rock exploded a hot mix of lava and pulverized older rock toward Spirit Lake.

It hit a 1,150-foot-high ridge about 6 miles north, and most of it moved 13 miles down the river, filling the valley up to 600 feet deep with avalanche debris.
An area of about 24 square miles was covered from 150 feet thick up to 1 mile thick below Spirit Lake
Eruption column rose 80,000 feet (15 milies) into the atmosphere and deposited ash in 11 U.S. states.

Snow, ice and several glaciers melted, forming a series of large lahars (volcanic mudslides) that reached as far as the Columbia River, nearly 50 miles (80 km) to the southwest.

Fifty-seven people were killed.

Hundreds of square miles were reduced to wasteland

Caused over a billion U.S. dollars in damage ($2.88 billion in 2014 dollars
Thousands of game animals were killed.
Thousands of trees were torn from the surrounding hillside after the lake was sloshed 800 feet up the hillside. All the water in Spirit Lake was temporarily displaced by the landslide
230 square miles of forest were knocked down

Explosions blasted rock debris that initially moving at 220 miles per hour but quickly accelerating to 670 ph, and it might have briefly passed the speed of sound.

At least 17 separate pyroclastic flows occurred during the May 18 eruption, and their aggregate volume was about 0.05 cubic miles (210,000,000 m3).
The flow deposits were still at about 300 to 420 °C (572 to 788 °F) two weeks after they erupted.

A huge ash column grew to a height of 12 miles above the expanding crater in less than 10 minutes and spread into the stratosphere for 10 straight hours.
About 540,000,000 tons of ash fell over an area of more than 22,000 square miles

 

 

 

 

Portland Oregon

I drove to Portland to visit Oregon: My 49th state.

 

Portland is the "City of Roses".  I saw the the International Rose Test Garden   http://www.rosegardenstore.org/rose-gardens.cfm

 

 Roses everywhere!   this garden includes more than 10,000 plantings of over 500 varieties.

It the oldest rose testing program of its kind in the United States.

In Portland, Oregon I also visited The Grotto - a place of solitude, peace, and prayer. The heart the grounds to Our Sorrowful Mother carved into a 110 foot cliff. It is a white marble replica of Michelangelo's Pieta that I saw in St. Peters Cathedral in '78. It was a great place to start a wonderful trip.  64 acres.  It’s a wooded sanctuary.

Next on this trip is a 10 hour, 4700 mile flight to Tokyo, then to Shanghai, China -  **China**