FMF - Friends of Minerals Forum, discussion and message board

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The ape caves are awesome. They are in the Mt. St. Helens park I believe and the cave is a huge lava tube thousands of years old. I am sure most of you know what the caves are but not sure how many of you have actually been there. I went back in high school, it was a volcano summer day camp preceding my first year in high school actually. The week long day camp was to count as a science a credit but I never did the homework required to get the credit since I didn't need any help there, I loved science and was going to take it anyhow. Back to the caves. There really wasn't much to look at but the fact of being in a giant lava tube was way cool. As a kid then and not really having much interest in rock collecting I wasn't really looking around to see if there was anything but from what I do remember seeing the walls are just all black nothing growing on or in them that I could see. Even I found something state law says you can't remove artifacts of any kind from parks or other government property and that includes rocks and minerals. I would love to go back sometime though and do some rock searching in that area.

Other places we went were forest park, horse shoe falls, of course the Mt St Helens observatory which I also went to during school in a field trip so that was cool going twice so close to each other, a dam, can't remember which one, it's on the tip of my tongue but I can't get it out. We went on really long hikes too, well most of the day camp was hiking, the hikes took a really long time. We would be walking for hours upon hours. I can't remember where else we went, I remember what the places looked like but can't remember what they were called. At the end of the day we got to go home that's what makes it a day camp in case a few of you weren't aware what I was talking about.

And on another note when I was 13 me my dad a friend and couple of my dad's friends climbed Mt St Helens. Took all day to get the top and then back down. Most of the hike was getting to the mountain. It was like 6 hours to get to the top from base camp, or parking lot would be a better name for it, and then 6 hours back so it took all day long. That was awesome and I even took home a piece of pumice that I unfortunately missed place over the years.