Mount St. Helens and the Drive of a Lifetime
In the spring of 1980, I decided to drive to Portland, Oregon to visit my eldest brother and his family.
I left Indianapolis on a cloudy May morning in my 1979 Triumph Spitfire. As usual, my companion on this trip was my car stereo. It had a decent radio and a nice cassette player. I had added after-market speakers so I could make it loud. It would strain the limits of credulity to suggest I could remember all the cassettes I took on the trip, but I do remember “It’s Only Rock ‘n Roll” by the Stones, and “In a Glass House” by Gentle Giant (which is a prog classic, believe me). I headed up and around Chicago, and then west on I-90.
On the morning of May 18, 1980, the radio told of a major eruption of Mount St. Helens in Washington state. This had been expected for some time, since St. Helens had been noticeably active and threatening since mid-March. Now, the big deal for someone driving west (e.g. me) was the eastbound ash cloud. Mount St. Helens blasted ash up to 12 miles into the air and kept pumping away for hours.
Driving through South Dakota and into Wyoming, I saw no sign of the event. In Wyoming, I-90 turns north into Montana, and this is where things started to get dicey. The further west I went, the worse the ash and visibility became. Eventually, the interstate was closed in Missoula, the home of Montana State University. I pulled into a gas station parking lot just off the exit ramp, tied a washcloth over my face, and slept in the car. Sleeping in the car was not unusual for me in those days, since I was an immortal twenty-something.
When day came, it was like a dense fog. You could drive on the surface streets, but you had to drive very slowly to keep from stirring up the ash on the ground, of which there was quite a bit. Everything I'd heard on the radio that morning said to go south. Of course there was no Google Maps back then, but there definitely were paper ones, and I was a map nut. I still have a long document box filled with them. I discovered that US-12 lead out of Missoula going south. At Lolo, Montana, seemingly beyond the ash flow, I could either continue south on US-93, or turn west and stay on US-12, which appeared to be open. It was the first east-west corridor that I came across that was not closed. There was a chance I would be stymied further down the road, but I decided to chance it. And I'm glad I did!
US-12 from Lolo to Lewiston, Idaho is possibly the most beautiful and scenic drive I have ever made. According to some on the internet these days, it possibly the most beautiful and scenic drive period. There are lots of YouTube videos of motorcyclists making the drive. It also has a significant history, but I didn't know that at the time. Lolo Pass is the route that Lewis and Clark took to get through the Rockies heading west. So there's that.
The drive climbs up through the majestic Nes Perce Clearwater National Forest, then down along the banks of the Lochsa and Clearwater Rivers. This is a fabulous drive, especially in a little sports car with the top down. It constantly winds along the bends of the rivers and is just an absolute blast. If you like driving at all, this is a bucket list drive.