Our last day out was exhausting: we didn’t do much, but the traffic between Olympia and Seattle was an unending nightmare of congestion. But we did make it to the Toutle River after checking out of the hotel, so that was awesome! I brought you a UFD, which many of you will be able to identify in 2.2 seconds flat, but it’s still an awesome birdie.

Here, I will make it more challenging by giving you a distant view first. Besides, you love the Toutle River and want to see it, right? Here it is by the Old Pacific Highway bridge.

We were down there because the desk person at the hotel had said we could reach the confluence of the Toutle and Cowlitz rivers by driving down that road, couldn’t miss it. Well, the actual confluence is rather south of here, and there were no trails along the river. But we did see some bonza lahar deposits, and lots of pigeons, and this bird.

I’ll bet like 90% of you just got it right then. But I took moar pitchoors!

And here it is looking for a proper landing spot.

And then it executed a perfect landing – ta-da!

I love that picture. That bird looks like it belongs in a burlesque show.

B and I left shortly afterward, and continued in search of a way to get to the confluence of the two rivers. I don’t really recommend what we ended up doing, which was parking at the end of a county road and walking alongside the railroad tracks for like a mile. Yes, we did it safely! We stayed well off the tracks and didn’t go on the bridge, and when the Amtrak train flew past, we didn’t even feel the wind from it. But there have got to be easier ways to get a view of this place, and I will find them, because I think this is a fantastic illustration of the power of Mount St. Helens to change the landscape far away from the blast site. I’ll bet you can tell which bit of water here is the Cowlitz and which is the Toutle:

I was inordinately excited by this location. It was a lot of fun getting down there and seeing in person what I’d only seen on satellite images before. And when I’m less tired, I’ll show you more of the pictures, and the snazzy video I took.

Having succeeded in everything, even finding a dredge pile when I’d given up all hope, we turned round and headed toward home. We wanted a burger for lunch, and chose Van’s, because they were highly rated. They’re also out in the boondocks. We got a magnificent view of Mount Rainier on the way, which was our only consolation, because Van’s turned out to be two drive-by shacks like those little espresso stands that are everywhere up here. We wanted a sit-down burger, damn it! So we turned round and went to the Fish Tale Brew Pub, which had delicious food and fantastic service. We were so stuffed that we didn’t make it to any parks in Olympia, though we should have wasted the rest of the afternoon at one, because the traffic all the way up to Seattle was bumper-to-bumper madness. It took us over twice as long to make the trip as it should have done. Argh.

Happily, once I dropped B off, they hadn’t closed the 522 yet, so I was able to get home without getting back on the freeway. Misha was alive and thrilled to see me. S and I were standing in my doorway talking, and I got a proper bawling out for not coming in immediately to pet her. Oh, and replenish her food, which she’d snarfed down already. I swear she’s gained at least a pound since we moved here. Being outraged at the other pets is good for her appetite. She gave me lots of affection and purrs for feeding her some more, and we settled in for a nice long nap. Yay, home!

Now I’m just waiting for Aunty Flow to show up so that my uterus will stop torturing me. (I am not actually joking when I say I will happily give it away to anyone who’s desperate enough to have kids to have the wretched thing transplanted.) But as long as it doesn’t absolutely murder me tomorrow, I’ll have some more good stuff for ye. It was a laid-back trip in which we did much lounging about, but we also got an abundance of awesome photos and saw many things we’d never seen before. I count it a spectacular success. And, with luck, it won’t be the last big trip of summer. Stay tuned, my darlings!