Before heading to the coast after our week of visiting with a relative, we took a couple of day trips inland. One was to Mount St. Helens (photos forthcoming), which is indelibly impressed on me because of its catastrophic eruption on May 18, 1980 (I was 16 at the time and avidly consumed all news about it). The other trip was a drive along the Historic Columbia River Highway, which winds between the Columbia river and glade after glade of waterfalls. The photo below is of the Horsetail Falls. You can expect to see lots of photos (over time) of the trip. I can’t decide which I love most: the stately, wild solitude of the mountain; the lush, verdant whispers of the forest; or the bracing, austere profile of the coast. How grateful I am to experience them all.