The Conservative Hippie

I discovered the news immediately while watching Sunday morning cartoons. Woke my parents up. We lived a quarter way up the highest hill in Kalama. We drove to the top. From a freshly cut logging road we could see the eruption with an unobstructed view. The most remarkable hidden aspect of the eruption was the sound. You could feel it in your chest. When viewed with binoculars, the velocity of the ash exiting the mountain was incredible. The mud flow destroyed river communities like the Toutle River as it made its way down to the Columbia River. The flow from the eruption dumped so much sediment in the Columbia, it made the shipping channel unnavigable. To this day driving on I5 over the Toutle River bridge you can still see the results of the eruption sediment flow. The Army Corps of Engineers got to work dredging the sediment from the Columbia River to open the shipping channel. But what to do with the sediment being sucked from the river? The Port of Kalama has plenty of property along I5 at the Kalama River Road exit. My dad was the steward of receiving tons and tons and tons of river sediment onto the wetlands of the port property (controversial). The sediment was used to create an industrial foundation. A new grain elevator was built (Peavey at the time), and a new steel mill (BHP at the time). It continues to be a foundation for industrial growth to this day. Driving on I5 you can still see the sediment dumped onto islands on the Columbia River. And you can still see the sediment used as an industrial foundation at the Exit to Longview on I5 (after decades a building was finally built recently). The incredible devastation and human cost from the Mt St Helens eruption was actually turned into the foundation for jobs and industrial growth in SW Washington.

A Supercross track where every jump is over water.

Insanely clever marketing. It’s a water stencil so what they’re doing is power washing the sidewalk and creating the words with the dirt that remains.

So obvious

The Clementine mandarin oranges sold in stores are increasingly flavorless. Does anyone know what's going on with this?