Not the most successful adventure, but...

Last weekend, Slav and I went on a little adventure. In an attempt to escape the city's hustle and bustle, we headed for Mt. Saint Helens, which turns out to be kind of a long drive once you go through the park to the visitor's centers. It did not erupt violently while we were there, but it is still steaming away. Here we are:

Me, protesting the photo

Slav and the volcano, notice the steam

When we drove back out of the park to the campground, we discovered that it was full. Ugh. I guess we were really hungry because that's when we decided to drive to Seattle to get piroshki instead. After hours of driving, we ended up at a campground only about 30min outside of the city. It was quite nice, though we couldn't tell at the time because it was totally dark. What were we thinking!?!
In the morning we drove into Seattle and got breakfast before heading to the Japanese garden. We weren't overly impressed with it, but luckily there were some musicians there playing some traditional Japanese music. That really helped bring the experience together more. Here I am in the garden:

After some quiet time there, we headed downtown to the market, seeking piroshki. Instead, we ended up seeking parking, which was complicated because we were driving Slav's enormous van (yeah, the one with the sunflowers). Finally, after a traffic jam caused by "Breast Cancer 3 day" walkers and minutes that seemed like hours spent circling the area, we squeezed into a parking place.

When we sat down to eat our piroshki, they didn't taste quite as good as we had remembered them tasting. Dang it!

Disappointed and somewhat puzzled about how we ended up in this situation in the first place, we headed south toward Portland. The campground we ended up in was quite lovely, though it was owned by Pacific Power (located on the shores of their reservoir). Here we are at the campground:

This is the reservoir in the morning sun

Oh yeah, and we saw this van:

Mom and Dad, thank you for not being nuts.