Reply #9: Thats the one! [View All]

.....and you did the exact thing any member of that fictional town would have done. When I saw that you were from Roslyn my first thoughts were that you were quoting a story from that show. I have been to Roslyn once, quite long ago. I think we were lost and wound up there while looking for Snoqualmie Falls.

If you think gettin stranded up at Paradise was crazy, the story behind why our van died is even better:
My then girlfriend, (now "ex") and I were camping up on Mt Rainier's Rampart Ridge close to Longmire when Mt. St Hellens blew up. If we had been a few $$ wealthier back then I would not be relating any of this as my first plan was to go camping in the "red-zone" of MT. St Hellens. I had spent May 11, the weekend before it blew, up there and wanted to go back. Because we lacked the gas money we choose Mt. Rainier instead as it is a full tank of gas closer. That very campsite back on Mt. St Hellens was but a couple of miles NW of the volcano and WELL WITHIN the blast zone. We were very lucky not to have been there, even-so at Rainier we got clobbered by the ash cloud and had to hike in an ash fog a few miles back to Longmire. By the time we got to Longmire the ash was coming down so thick that our visibility was perhaps 10 yards or so. Once at Longmire we were herded into the cafeteria along with a few dozen other folks where we were given the option of staying there free of charge OR forming up a caravan with our vehicles and get led out of the park by a ranger. We chose to leave with the caravan. For much of that trip I walked beside our Volkswagen van, (the ash-fog was that dense), and I collected baggies of ash off the windshield along the way. By the time we reached the park entrance the ash-fog was thinning enough to drive through, by Tacoma it was all gone with clear blue skies ahead. It was a few weeks later that we chose to take our friends back up to Mt. Rainier only to get stranded with a dead engine. Turns out the ash had ruined our engine and that next trip back up the mountain was to be it's last one.