I spent most of today cleaning up from last week’s Mt St Helens climb. I started by unloading my car (yes, I’ve been driving around the entire week with a damp tent and sleeping bag in my boot.. ermm.. trunk). I then gave my tent a good wipe down to try to remove the ash. Note that I said “try”. Ash was everywhere, even on the inside walls of the tent. I have no idea how it got there. I finally gave up and just set up the tent to let the fabric dry off. Needless to say, I got a few strange stares from my neighbors as I was doing this on the grassy patch between my apartment and the parking lot.
Next, I washed my car. To see the multiple layers of dust (first layer from Dosewallips State Park three weeks ago, the second layer from the unpaved road that I had to drive to get to the Cascade Pass trailhead two weeks ago and finally the last layer of ash from St Helens) wash off with the soap and water was the most satisfying experience I’ve had the whole week. I like the feeling of driving around in a clean car. The cleaning continued with a thorough vacuum of the interior. However, no matter how hard I beat the carpets, I couldn’t get rid of the dust. So I decided to throw them away. I’ll buy new ones tomorrow, after all they were quite old and I’ve been wanting to buy new ones for a long time already.
Posted by kelxia 
