Pictures from this part of the trip can be found in Gallery, Part 4.
On Sunday, we had plans to meet Sean for lunch and Jean & Bob for dinner. Sean suggested meeting at Pok Pok, a little Thai place. Jean & Bob decided to take us to Rhinelander, a German restaurant. In a strange coincidence, not only were both of those restaurants in our Fodor's guidebook, but they were right next to each other on the same page.
Although we had arranged to meet Sean at 11:30am, none of us realized that Pok Pok didn't even open until 11:30am. We got there about 15 minutes early. Instead of standing on the sidewalk, we took the opportunity to wander around the neighborhood. It felt a lot like South Minneapolis — maybe Uptown. By the time we made it around the block, Sean was there and then the restaurant opened. We got a secluded table outside under their awning and spent the next few hours talking. The food was really good and fairly unusual: Sean had a drinking vinegar; Julie had Yam Khai Do (a salad that included a fried egg); and Ken had Neua Naam Tok (kind of a spicy flank steak "salad" with fish sauce, lime & chili powder dressing, shallots, lemongrass, mint, cilantro, and toasted rice powder). Yum!
Eventually, we decided to go do some hiking in the Columbia Gorge. We left our car by Pok Pok and Sean drove. The historic highway through the Gorge was closed, so we made it as far as Vista House before having to turn around and get get back on the interstate. Eventually, we hiked for a while at Wahkeena Falls, and then drove down a bit to look around at Multnomah Falls (although we didn't have enough time to walk very far while we were there). It was really crowded, typical for a Sunday.
After looking at Multnomah Falls, Sean drove us back into Portland and dropped us off at our car. We had a chance to get cleaned up a little back at our hotel room before getting to Jean & Bob's around 5:30pm. We sat around and chatted with them for a bit, and then walked over to Rhinelander with them. At Rhinelander, we met Jean's kids (Steve and Cynthia, and Cynthia's husband) for dinner. Dinner was good. We got a big round back table where we could all talk. We split a few orders of cheese fondue, and then Ken had something called Jaegerschnitzel and Julie had a pork loin dish. The whole place has a kitchzy vibe: the servers wear costumes, there was an accordian player wandering around, and toward the end of the evening the servers even got together and performed a few beer-related songs. All in all, a nice place to spend the evening.
After dinner, we went back to Jean & Bob's house and chatted with them until around 10:00pm.
Monday mornning, we headed back over to Jean & Bob's around 9:45am. We all piled in the Jeep and headed north to Mt. St. Helens. When you get off the highway, it turns out that there quite a few state and federal visitor centers all looking to cash in. We stopped first at the Silver Lake visitor center, but decided not to pay admission. Then, we headed further in and stopped at the Forest Learning Center, which was closed for the season (but we got to take in some neat views of the Tutle River Valley anyway). Our main destination was the Johnston Ridge Observatory, run by the National Park Service as part of the Mt. St. Helens National Volcanic Monument.
At Johnston Ridge, we listened to part of a ranger talk outside, then went inside for the movie, along with a few buses' worth of middle-school kids. After the movie, we wandered through the museum before deciding it was time for lunch (it was approaching 2:00pm). We headed back to the Hoffstadt Bluffs visitor center and got lunch at their on-site restaurant, the Fire Mountain Grill (good burgers, sandwiches and beer).
Now fortified, we stopped at the Buried A-Frame house on our way out of the area. Jean remembered this from when she first visited the area, within a year or so after the eruption. The house was about a week from being completed when the volcanic mud flow filled in the bottom few feet of the ground floor. The house itself is not much to look at: it's basically just an excuse to walk through the North Fork Survivors Gift Shop. However, the various displays at the gift shop (especially the before and after pictures) were in some ways better than what we had seen at all of the "official" visitor centers. Normally, we'd pass by a place displaying a giant statue of Bigfoot, but it was definitely worth it.
We tanked up the Jeep on the way back to the interstate and headed back to Jean & Bob's house in Portland. The rest of the night, we just hung out with them and chatted. We eventually got hungry and threw some frozen pizzas in the oven. Bob showed us his Egyptian collectibles and we spent a while looking at old pictures and videos with Jean. We finally headed back to our hotel sometime after 11:00pm.