Sick again....

So I became sick again with a cold and bad cough on Friday before our 3 day weekend off of work when we were supposed to visit with my grandparents.  As I did not want to make them sick we had a sudden change in plans.  We desperately wanted to get out of town (so to speak) so we headed south- because I-90 was a mess and Tom had never seen Mount St. Helens.  We decided to drive through parts of Lewis county to see how they were faring after the devastating floods of December and still found plenty of damage and work to be done:

Damaged barn

Condemned house (reminded me of New Orleans)

Silted land

Debris covering barbed wire fence

Log jam with a fridge

Destroyed bridge on river bank

Debris in tree about 30 feet above current high river level

Tore apart asphalt and guard rail

Silted yard

Then we proceeded to Mount St. Helens.  28 years later you can still see the mud flow damage and where the side of the mountain blew out, as well as the large crater.  The lava dome is still growing and there's steam evident.  I realized our trip seemed to be focused on the destructive powers of nature.

Downed trees from the blast still evident

Columbia gorge (showing the effects of the river on bringing down the Cascade Range)

The raging Naches River

Since I am still coughing near constantly I couldn't work today.  I did get more of my wool roving back from Z-wool fiber mill.  On Friday I received roving from our brown llama Fancy, mioget (golden-brown) roving from our Shetland ewes Wink and Wilma, and dark grey Mohair roving from several years of shearing our Angora goat.  Today I received grey roving from 5 of our Shetland sheep- Suzette, Monette, Darwin, Reuben and Jenny.  It's pictured below.  I'll sell some of this and our light brown roving but keep the rest for my own projects.  Next for fiber processing I'll go through the wool I skirted out, pull out the worst of the contaminated and felted wool and have quilt battings made- hopefully by Gretchen's Mill.