Mt. St. Helens

Friday was a gorgeous, blue-sky day, and Lee decided to drive to Mt. St. Helens.

The first place we stopped was the 7 Wonders Museum in Toutle.  This is a creationist museum run by Lloyd and Doris Anderson.  They were proponents of the gap theory until after Mt. St. Helens blew. They were invited to an Institute for Creation Research convention where the details of the explosion convinced Lloyd of the young earth.  In 1996 he visited Mt. St. Helens and decided to start the museum upon retirement. They started it about

Before we went inside, Lloyd showed us this mural on his garage door.  It depicts four of the seven wonders of Mt. St. Helens.

The introduction to a pamphlet Mr. Anderson wrote states, "The 7 Wonders, summarized below, are seven kinds of geological features resulting from the eruptive activity of the '80's and displayed at the Mount St. Helens (MSH) Creation Information Center.  Because they formed rapidly, they challenge evolutionary thought, which routinely assigns long ages to such formations." These are the seven points:

1. Mountain rearranged beyond recognition in minutes.
2. Canyons formed in five months.
3. Badlands formed in five days.
4. Layered strata formed in three hours.
5. River system formed in nine hours.
6. Sinking logs look like many aged forests in just ten years.
7. A new model for quicker coal formation.

We visited two other museums, both highly interesting. One is run by Weyerhauser, the company which has replanted much of the area destroyed by the volcanic eruption.  Their beautiful and educational museum spoke much of the rapid recovery of nature and nothing (that I saw) of "millions of years."

The other was run by the forest service at the Johnsotne Observatory overlooking the mountain and about five miles away. It has an excellent view, detailed interactive, scientific information, and a great 16 minute film of the eruption.  The narrator, who spoke of the continuous and violent changes we can expect from the earth, still dared to assume "eons" in those cases where we have no personal observation to prove otherwise.  If the light that is in you be darkness, how great is that darkness.

Bridge at Hoffstadt Bluffs

Tourists (Notice the neat felt camera bag.)