North Through the Ashes!

Trip Start Sep 19, 1973
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Trip End Apr 18, 2006


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Flag of United States  , Washington,
Sunday, May 25, 1980

My father retired from the Air Force in 1980 and my step-mom, who was in the civil service, got a new job working at the Submarine Base in Bangor, Washington, just north of Bremerton.

Yes, through the ashes! My father and I drover north together about 2 weeks ahead of my step-mom and sister, exactly one week after Mt. St. Helens blew. Therefore we ended up driving through a TON of ashes on the trip up Interstate 5 through southern Washington, where we had to stop the car about every 5 minutes to get out and bang the ashes out of our air filter to keep the car running. The devestation we saw that day driving through the area was just incredible - another of those memories that is forever burned into my mind.

After getting to Bremerton we lived for a while in a hotel while my folks looked for a rental place. Being a Navy town, that was pretty difficult, so we actually ended up living at Illahee State Park on the beach on Puget Sound in Bremerton over the summer, another fun memory from those days. Afterwards we did find homes in a few different places over the years, as well as a couple of bouncebacks to my mother in Louisiana, so the next few entries will just be map points with no text, just to track the movements.
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