John and I were last at Mt. St. Helens twenty years ago. We've never taken the kids. Oops. We were already halfway there at Great Wolf Lodge, so off we went on an adventure.

Adventure 1: the small town motel. John and I have stayed in many of these and in fact many dreadful motels in our cross country journeys, but I don't think the kids have ever been woken by the next door neighbors. To be fair, that was my only complaint with the motel.

Adventure 2: the small town fancy restaurant. I meant to ask the person at the motel front desk for a menu, but she just told me I had to eat at the restaurant across the street. Rose was sort of shocked that they had no gluten free items on the kid menu, did not label anything gluten-free, and they did not have g-f substitute buns. Welcome to small town America. But because we are in modern America, the server's father-in-law is gluten sensitive, and the server could guide us through the menu. The kids could really have eaten reasonably--baked potato bar, shrimp louie, steak with just salt and pepper--but they were tired and dehydrated, so they chose to wait for dinner back in the room. Of course, we had brought lots of food.

Today we went to the visitor center at the base of the mountain, the interpretive hike at the one of the newly formed lakes, and a 2.5 mile hike around the hummocks. The weather was glorious. It had been snowing when I called last week, and this week it was warm and sunny. The views were perfect. I remember when the mountain blew, but seeing video of the 10 mile ash plume was stunning. Because we were off season, the place was pretty deserted. It was lovely to have the trail mostly to ourselves.

I'm so glad our vacation had both the resort tacky and the mountain majesty.