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jwslaw's avatar

On May 18th 1980 Mount St. Helens erupted in Washington State. Where were you?

I was camping with my father in the mountains to the east of Bellevue where we lived at the time. Not exactly sure where we were other than to the north of Mount St Helens and near a smaller lake where we were trying to catch trout. We woke at the crack of dawn, fished for a while --- caught nothing, and went back to bed. It seemed a sunny day at dawn, but when we woke up it was a eerie gray sky. We packed up and drove into the nearest town where they had the highway blocked leading back to the west(?) into the Bellevue/Seattle area. Thankfully my father at the time was full of piss n vinegar and was able to drive on the wrong side of the highway around the barricades and back down the mountains to home where the ash started to accumulate, but not substantially --maybe an inch or so.

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David's avatar

I remember being in a Safeway in CA hearing about it on the radio. Was about the same time that the other biggest news story in America was that J.R. had been shot on the season finale of Dallas. Was also about the same time I got Pink Floyd's The Wall album.

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