Small world, indeed.

I used to love stopping in at Coulee Dam on our way to Seattle from Kettle Falls, where I lived until I was 13.

It's funny, we had warnings that the mountain could blow, but none of us _believed_ it would blow. Color us surprised when it did.

Talked to a friend yesterday who grew up in Ellensburg (~90 miles downwind). Similar story to yours and Shelley's; big boom, approaching dark cloud (with lightning), midnight dark by noon. They had about half a foot of ash. People had to sweep it off their roofs because they were sagging under the weight. They brought out the snow plows to clear the roads.

One thing I learned from Google Maps is that Spirit Lake appears to be *still* filled with floating trees. You can see them in the satellite view. They move around on different zoom levels.

I was a high school senior in Coeur d'Alene, ID. I was working at a restaurant and we watched the news from Spokane. We saw the soot cloud turn the sky pitch dark in Spokane. About 30 minutes or so later it hit CdA. Then it passed and the sky lightened to a weird orange. Not so bad we thought. Then the ash came and fell for three days. We missed two weeks of school. The school district bagged trying to make up the days so we got out of finals and had to go with our grades at the time of the eruption.

The ash was amazing stuff. After the ash fall stopped, I helped clean the parking lot of the restaurant I worked at, which was right on I-90 where it came down out of the mountains from Montana and went around Lake Coeur d'Alene. You could push it with a broom and it would flow like viscous mercury. It was too heavy to make dust.

While we were working a car came down out of the hills and pulled into the parking lot. It was two senior citizens trying to make it to town because the wife's meds had run out. We opened the hood, pulled the air cleaner, and just poured ash out of it. We sent them on their way.

The ash fall was amazing--total silence, no animals, birds, cars, anything. I had a war surplus gas mask so I went out into it one afternoon. Very surreal.

We heard it here in Vancouver BC and people all over the province heard it as well according to news reports.

The following year (or maybe it was '82) I was in Auburn for a soccer exchange (I would have been 11 or 12). My exchange family had some stories to tell about the thick layer of ash that fell on their property and I still have a jar full that they gave to me. It has a pretty unique texture a little bit like very fine grey sand about the consistency of talcum powder, very dusty (if you shake it), and a tiny number of very small black chunks about 1mm in diameter.