I have not posted much over summer so I will show pictures of some things that we have been doing.
Two of the carrot patches.
Some beautiful scenery photos!
The sun peeking through the apple trees.
The oat field.
Pruning in the apple orchard.
Lots of vegetables this summer! This is all from one picking of peas!
This is a carrot digger that Jesse made. It digs around the carrots to loosen our hard soil so we can pull carrots easily right out of the ground.
Takes a little weight to push it into the ground!
We just finished mowing for our customers yesterday!
We just got our rink up over our garden. And…
The leaves are changing.
“Let the people praise thee, O God; let all the people praise thee.Then shall the earth yield her increase; and God, even our own God, shall bless us.God shall bless us; and all the ends of the earth shall fear him.” Psalm 67: 5-7
In the past summer we had the opportunity to visit the crooked bush in the Hafford area, on the way home from a program. The trees appeared very interesting. There was another small bush right beside this crooked one, which had no crooked limbs even though they were the same type of trees.
A study has been done at the University of Saskatchewan, where they took from these trees and planted them at the University, and they still grow the same way.
Last Sunday, after playing for a community service in Laird, our family packed up to go to the lake. Heidi had been unable to go with us on our trip to BC/Washington earlier this summer so this was to be our whole family together. Some of us stayed until Wednesday. Josh and Levi came back early Tuesday morning to work but at least our family was all together for a couple of days.
Some of the things we enjoyed doing were: water skiing, wakesurfing (you go right behind the boat), knee boarding, paddle boarding, attempting wakeboarding, fishing and, of course special family devotional times.
Everybody, but Andrew and Mom skiied, and most of us tried dropping a ski when up.
On our second day at Mt. St. Helens, we went to the Seven Wonders Museum. Lloyd and Doris Anderson along with Kim Jones showed the Biblical implications of what had happened from the erruption. They led us on a guided tour to the main side of the mountain. We were also priviledged to meet the Curator of the San Diego based Creation and Earth History Museum. He and his family were also on the tour. The tour was excellent and interesting! It started with looking through the museum followed by a slide show and talk by Mr. Anderson. Then visits to several sites along Spirit Lake Highway and some hiking.
This A-frame was fairly new at the time of the erruption. It was fourteen miles from the volcano. One would have thought it would be a safe site. But when the mud started flowing it dealt a generous helping of mud to the cabin burying the bottom floor with about four feet of mud.
In this picture you can see a few trees that survived the steam blasts, surrounded by many new trees planted by the forestry companies.
Many areas still look like a disaster compared to the forests that once stood there.
Standing on the stump of a tree which was partly buried by the landslide.
We were on a ridge quite a distance from the mountain, but some of the areas we were on were at least 200 feet higher than they were pre-1980. There were lots of hummocks in this area formed by the landslides.
An igneous rock among some of the new growth.
The trees are still lying around after over three decades.
Some badland and erosion formations caused by the volcano.
This was one of our tour guides, Lloyd Anderson, the director of the Mt. St. Helens Creation Museum. It was great having him and Kim Jones lead us with their knowledge of the area.
Some beautiful scenery.
And the volcano with its canyons. This particular photo was taken high on Johnston Ridge.
Badlands.
The canyons were huge. They would have been cool to tour but because of the dangers of a live volcano and park restrictions, only people with special research permits are allowed down in this valley. The significance of these canyons is that they were formed in hours, some of them through solid rock, the tallest of them is 140 feet deep. The fact that these formed in hours means that the Grand Canyon didn’t have to take millions of years to form. It could have formed in a day while the flood waters were draining. Observable Science doesn’t contradict the Bible! Rather it proves that the Bible is true.
Amazing scenery!
God’s rock gardens!
Kim Jones signing “The Case Of The Missing Mountain” which she wrote.
And a picture of the directors of the Museum in front of their mural. Sorry for the big shady area on the picture, it was so nice and sunny during our visit that it was hard to get a good picture, but I guess we can’t complain. The Andersons were great to us and Mrs. Anderson even served our whole group a meal after the tour!
Last Sunday, June 29, after singing at Three Rivers Bible Church in Kelso, we started the tour of the Mt. St. Helens area. We started off with the south side of the mountain which had not seen the devastating effects of the 1980 blast. What it did have though was pretty interesting. First of all we hiked the Ape Caves. The Ape name comes from the name of the first group to explore the caves. These caves were formed by an erruption of Mt. St. Helens over 150 years ago. They were lava flows where the lava on top kept cooling while the lava underneath flowed out and left a long tunnel-like cave. There were two parts to the cave there, Dad and us older guys went in the 2.2 mile upper one while Mom, my aunt and the younger kids went in the lower one.
There were many rock falls to climb over in the upper cave, this one was definitely of volcanic origin.
Most of the areas in the cave were around twenty feet wide and ranging in height from fifteen to thirty feet but a few places it got pretty tight and you had to basically crawl or step sideways through a narrow opening.
The caves were somewhat reflective in places.
Sometimes you would walk over a rock pile and be in a big roomy spot with a nice gravel floor, other times…. well, the floor was like a puddle.
I walked on the bottom although some of my brothers thought the sides would be fun to walk on. Sorry for the dark blurry pictures, the only light in the cave was what you brought in so the camera wouldn’t focus properly.
A window into the cave from above.
And the exit, it may not look small on this picture but you have to crawl out of there and it gets pretty tight.
After the Ape Caves, we went to the Trail of Two Forests where we saw lava casts of what used to be a forest. These lava casts were caused by lava flowing through a forest in an erruption previous to 1980. The slightly cooled lava solidified around the trees while incinerating them, which left a bunch of tree-patterned holes in the ground.
One fallen tree was engulfed by the lava. You could crawl through it.
Following that we went to Lava Canyon.
A fun suspension bridge way above the falls.
He casteth forth his ice like morsels: who can stand before his cold? He sendeth out his word, and melteth them: he causeth his wind to blow, and the waters flow. Psalm 147:17,18.
