volcanos are scary

I live in a state that has these… You know, because a little ol' mountain can go from looking like this one day… …to looking like this the next. And when this one decides to go all kablooy… …they say it could cause one of these. YIKES! Since moving here I have had to add earthquakes, volcanoes and tsunamis to my list of what one might call irrational fears. This list also includes tornadoes, public restrooms, touching raw chicken, and clowns (especially clowns). But let’s stick to volcanoes shall we. The town we live in is built in the path of the Osceola Mudflow (look it up) so if Mt Rainier decides to blow its top we are pretty much toast. They say there is no evidence of an imminent eruption…but that does not mean that it won’t happen. This is the same reason I am all sorts of leery about going to Yellowstone. Sure it is beautiful, has an amazing array of wildlife, and let’s not forget about Old Faithful…and oh yeah it is also a SUPER VOLCANO. That is like a regular volcano times a gazillion. And while they say there is no evidence of an imminent eruption there either, the irrational fear kicks in that if I get anywhere near it…BLAM-O! We could then kiss a big chunk Wyoming, Montana, and Idaho goodbye. My sister and her family live in Idaho. I don’t think that I could live with the fact that me going to Yellowstone caused them to be blown up. Granted I would have been blown up too…but you get my drift. Now here is the funny part. I am not a lover of anything having to do with science. I only took the minimum required amount of science classes in school so I could make room in my schedule for more art classes. Husband is totally into science (he went to a nerdy engineering school and everything) and once asked me if I were to choose a science-y type of job what would I choose. Do you know what I said? VOLCANOLOGY!!! My reason…because lava is sooooo cool looking and I want to take pictures of it and poke at it with sticks. Anyway…seeing as Husband and I blew our wad on our first day in Oregon, it left us with the second day of our trip wide open. Day one was more about things I wanted to do so I left the activities of day two up to Husband. He chose going to see Mt St Helens. YEAH!!! We stopped at the visitors center first and watched the 13 minute video about the eruption…very informative. Did you know that Harry Truman was killed in the blast? At first I was like ‘wow, why weren’t we taught in school?’ One would think that learning that the 33rd president of the United States was killed by a Volcano was an interesting bit of history. Then ones' husband reminds you that Harry Truman the president died in 1972 and that the Harry Truman that was killed in the eruption was just a man that happened to have the same name of said president. Because we were there in the winter we were not able to go up to the Johnston Ridge Observatory. One of the rangers at the visitors center told us the best place to get a good look at the mountain this time of year was at the Clearwater Viewpoint. We hopped in the truck and headed in that direction. We got lucky, just a few minutes after I snapped the last photo the clouds moved in and surrounded the top of the mountain. Husband wants to go back in the summer so we can get up close to the mountain. I figure that I got this close and nothing catastrophic happened so why not.