July 2014 - Mt. St. Helens

We rented a cabin in Packwood for a weekend so we could hike around Mt. St. Helens inside the Gifford Pinchot National Forest.  David will be in this area during the upcoming hunting season so it was fun to visit and see all the wildlife and terrain he will hunt on.  We agreed that we actually would prefer to come here to hike than Mt. Rainier.  Our cabin was located halfway between the two mountains.

Our cute cabin.  Perfect size with 3 bedrooms.
Our dogs ran away the first night because we didn't realize
the screen door to the patio was broken.

Autumn is proud to be first!
Many many steps to the lookout point to see Mt. St. Helens.
Levi was quite upset that we couldn't actually climb on the volcano. 

Mt. St. Helens crater and Spirit Lake in the background

Ashley took a selfie of the whole family!
She's a pro at this!

Hike back down.
We had to give Levi a random rock and tell him it exploded out of the volcano before he would
calm down about the fact that we weren't going to actually walk on the volcano.

Olallie Lake with Mt Adams in the background
We stopped and ate lunch after finishing a ridiculously difficult drive.

Elk were everywhere!
Elk as we're driving through the forest.

Massive amounts of Elk off the highway at night

And Elk in the front yard of our cabin!
The boys really loved this!!

These two are such little troopers when it comes to hiking.

Levi takes every opportunity he can to throw rocks into water

We let the dogs run in front of our car
whenever we were in an isolated area and driving slow.

Both little ones were so exhausted both nights we were there.
Neither one were ready to go home on Sunday.
We'll definitely go back one day.