The wife and I visited Mt. St. Helens on our honeymoon in 2004. A person really cannot grasp the power involved in an eruption like that unless you see it for yourself. Trees 5' in diameter were snapped off like toothpicks about 20' above the ground and were blown uphill, thousands of them. There was a miner's car that they left as an exhibit at one of the turnoffs leading into the caldera area. It was completely flattened, as if it had been crushed in one of those car crushers. I was left stunned by what I saw.....
My husband and I were in Washington State in the late eighties. We had the opportunity to visit Mount St. Helens. It was an amazing trip, and wonderful to see that life could renew, and flourish, after such devastation. The film about it was something else, wasn’t it?
One of the most fantastic sights was to see the huge trees, with root systems still intact, that had made their way to the ocean and been rolled and tumbled and washed upon the beach. They had become huge, bleached out, mementos of that historical event. We had pictures made beside them to show the folks back home, but it was awesome to see it in person.