For our first trip to the Pacific Northwest, Maggie and I hopped our four-hour flight to Seattle. We had decided to drive down and see Mount Saint Helens and then spend a little time in Seattle before catching an early Sunday morning flight back.

The drive down to the volcano was nice. After we had finally driven out of the fog, the winding scenic route made for a nice drive up to the final visitors center. The area immediately in front of the blast was still quite bare even after 26 years. The destruction was unreal and it was evident that the mountain was far from quiet as evidenced by the many seismometers still monitoring its rumbles.

We pointed the car back North towards Seattle to spend the rest of the day. Randomly, we saw a sign for the Pacific Science Center touting a Dead Sea Scrolls exhibit. The rest of the museum was a very hands-on science center so we spent the remainder of the opening hours playing with all the exhibits. We wandered on over into the Pike Place Fish Market area. The market itself was obviously closed but the area around it was very nice and was crawling with folks going out to dinner and to shows. Between trying to drive down through the state and give Seattle its due, we obviously didn't have enough time to do much exploring in the rest of Seattle. We've already decided that we want to go back and maybe do a drive up or down the coast. That's assuming the flights are ever open again when the weather's nice. Apparently, it's better than where we are right now.