Washington: off the beaten path: Kelso - Ape Caves - Yale Lake

Thursday 21.06. Kelso (WAS) – Yale Lake – Woodland

The breakfast at the Best Western Hotel in Kelso (WAS) is fantastic. We eat English muffins with egg and yogurt. Well prepared, we roll from Kelso to Woodland (south), then onto the road to the east, driving south along Mount St. Helens and later on the eastern flank driving north again. Here on this eastern side, there is a path to a viewpoint called "Windy Ridge" overlooking Spirit Lake, which is still full of thousands of tree trunks 30 years after the eruption and offers a good view of the crater because it is quite high up. The photos I have seen were impressive.

But first, we want to visit the Ape Caves, caves that are on the way to the east. This 3 km long lava tube was created when molten rock cooled and hardened on the surface while lava continued to flow underneath, leaving a channel behind. Despite the name, there are no monkeys living here but bats. We know that you should bring 2 lamps per person and that you can rent them at the visitor center for $4.

Already during the preparation of this trip, it was extremely difficult to find a decent travel guide. So the information in our documents is apparently long outdated. Instead of a visitor center, there is a closed booth with no explanations or lamp rentals. So we literally look into the tube. Because the entrance to the Ape Caves is already the end of our plans.

It is pitch black, there is no real path and no lamps. So without lamps, there are no caves.

So we decide to take a hiking trail on the surface, the Ape Cave Trail. The trail leads through a beautiful forest with various shades of green (we thought we had seen them all...). Pines have fresh green leaves, maples have small emerald green leaves. Then we reach a sunny clearing. Wonderful. There is plenty of volcanic rock and many burnt tree trunks around us. Whether they are from the last volcanic eruption or the last forest fire is uncertain.

The ground is volcanic and you can clearly see the cooled lava streams lying like grooves in the forest floor. There is a pile of rocks in a clearing, with "Die Helene," Mount St. Helens, in the background against a blue sky. It's probably 25 degrees, no wind, and you can take off your fleece jacket. We continue walking through the forest. Wild strawberries, flowers, and beautiful fauna provide nice photo opportunities. After a good hour, we are back at the car.

A little further on, there is the “Trail of two Forests.” You walk a circular path on a wooden bridge through a forest. However, the ground beneath us is riddled with large tree-round holes.

These were created after an eruption of Mount St. Helens about 2000 years ago. Incandescent lava flowed through the forest, burning the trees above the ground, and as the lava around the lower areas of the tree trunks cooled faster than the trees burned, they left behind these holes. So you walk through a living forest with a non-existent forest beneath you - a path through two forests.

An interesting little piece of forest. There is also a lava tunnel here that you can crawl through. But we still want to go to Windy Ridge and continue driving to the east.

But - whoosh - our plan quickly evaporates: A sign tells us that the Highway 25, which we want to take, is still closed due to snow. We drive to the visitor center 19 miles away - maybe someone forgot the sign and everything is open after all? But no. The sign was correct, and our tour for today is now over and needs to be changed. Windy Ridge, the impressive viewpoint of the crater and the tree-filled lake, is canceled. It is believed that the road will not be open until mid/end of July (it actually opened on July 13). It is also a road that runs at an altitude of 3,000-4,000 feet, and the winter was snowy.

So we drive back to the west and turn off at Beaver Bay to a campground on Yale Lake. There, we sit in the grass for over 2 hours, looking at the beautiful lake, the wooded slopes, and enjoying the sun!

Yale Lake/Washington

At 4:30 pm, we drive to Woodland to our Motel 6. The motel is standard but located right off Interstate 5. We take a room all the way in the back, but it's not the greatest. The price of $59 is extremely good, though. Woodland itself is another soulless small town, without a town center, without shops, without charm. We look for something to eat, then go to the Oak Tree Restaurant and are back at our hotel shortly after 8 pm. We may not have seen what we wanted to, but we had a nice day with unexpected relaxation.