Underground

For our last day in Oregon, we actually headed to Washington to Mt. St. Helens.  Unfortunately, we couldn't make it to the actual visitor's center because it was just too far away.  We had planned to travel Ape Cave, a 1.5 mile lava tube, with 3 adults and 7 children.  This also includes a 1.5 mile hike back to the car above ground.  The kids were pretty excited.  No one (except me) was nervous or scared about being in complete darkness underground.  Fortunately, I had thought to get the kids headlamps. That ended up being a great idea.  I had a lantern and had trouble seeing.

The kids get ready - all smiles!

The whole gang!

The big hole we're heading down.  Just this hole is foreboding to me.  It just doesn't seem safe or secure.  But, I couldn't back out now.  And, I've done it before, so I was trying not to think about what could happen.  Matthew kept asking if the lava was going to come.  Fortunately, that was a question I could definitely answer positively. 

This is what a lot of the cave is like - a bunch of big rocks on the ground.  You have to crawl over the rocks.  The twins (age 4) were a little more timid, and Dave and Zia were helping them a lot.  That left me trying to keep up with all the other 5 kids that were running ahead.  It was hard to keep them safe and together.  I'm sure there are many dangers of climbing over these rocks, but I was too busy watching the kids to worry too much about them.  It was funny because Rachel got a little "mama-like" with Zia's kids.  She was helping with them and worrying about them when they got too far away from her.  It was cute!

Some parts of the cave had shorter ceilings.  This was a little more claustrophobia-inducing for me.

The biggest concern going in was the 8-foot wall here that we needed to scale with all 7 kids.  It has one good foothold and that's about it.  The big kids had fun scaling it.  They needed a little help but not much.  Then, we just handed up the little kids.  It was no match for us!

The ladder at the end.  Boy, was that a welcome sight.  It was just a little too long.  The kids did really well, but we were losing them.  They don't allow eating in the cave, so Matthew was getting upset.  As soon as we made it outside the cave, we had a big snack.  That, fortunately, changed attitudes - for a little while, anyway.

Zia and Cyrus coming out of the cave

When we parked, it was relatively warm and there was no sign of snow.  When we came out of the cave, there was snow everywhere and the sun was gone, so it was cold.  We had 1.5 miles back through a lot of snow.  The kids were slipping and sliding all over the snow.  It was not fun.  But, we just kept pushing on and all made it in pretty good spirits. A bunny along the route back helped distract us.

The mountain was beautiful on our way in, but we didn't stop for a picture. On the way out, not so much. You can't even tell where the mountain ends and the clouds stop. Oh well. And, on a sad note, we left Portland without ever being able to Mt. Hood. Horrible. We had hoped to ski on it, but that just didn't work, and it was too cloudy to see the mountain. Very sad!