the Creme de la Creme

You know what "they" (who are "they" anyway?) say about the weather here in the Pacific Northwest?  Well it isn't true from what we've seen.  We've been here twelve days close to  the coast and it hasn't rained once ... yup, the days start cloudy but have always cleared in the afternoon.  So we chose one of the days that started out clear and beautiful and headed to .... 

TAH DAH .... the creme de la creme ...

Mt. Rainier.  OMG what an awesome, surreal place!  Once again I will say it ~ being from New England we thought we knew mountains .... NOT!

The photo above was not taken from a Chamber of Commerce brochure, I took it, honestly I did!  As well as all the others in this post.  I'm not sure it's possible to take a bad photo of this mountain.  The thing is you can see it from 80 miles away.  The shot above was from about 40 or 50 miles away!

I think we took around 200 photos that day so it was really difficult to narrow it down to 15 or 20 to put on a post.  The photos of the mountain are just random shots of what I thought were the most "outstanding" of the lot!  There are no words I could write that would possibly do justice to this area so I'll let the photos do it instead.

The photo below was of a river bed along the road up and up and up.  In the spring, with the glacier melt the waters apparently are a beautiful blue but towards the end of the summer it is pretty much a brown, mucky color with greatly reduce flow as in the far left of the photo.  I would love to have seen this wide wide area all covered with blue water - amazingly enough some of these trees have been able to survive years of these rushing waters with the early melting.

I believe, but am not certain by any means, that there are two entrances into the Mount Rainier National Park.  We entered at the south western point (UGH just fumbling through my basket of very important travel information ~ etc ~ the etc means yes, a "junk basket", but I can't find the Mt. Rainier info, perhaps it's still in the car??).  Once we entered through the pay the admission gate (no thank you WE have a National Parks Pass for the next year, thank you very much, and in 23 months we can get a SENIOR pass for I believe $10.00 - yipppppeee, age certainly, most definitely does have benefits ~ well earned benefits, that we are delighted are recognized!) it was another 30+ miles up to "Paradise" ~ seriously, I thought I'd been to Paradise many many times over the last few years, but low and behold there is this place called Paradise in WA state and there is the Paradise Inn (and for sure I tried to find a tee shirt there that said something to the effect that "I've been to Paradise and back", but no could find!!).  Gosh darn if I didn't spend half an hour last night perusing their website to find out the elevation of the place.  I thought this was as high as we could go on the road we took in, but in hind sight ("ain't" it just 20/20 for sure!) I think that is incorrect.  I am fairly certain that is as high an elevation as King Richard was willing to travel (in the passenger seat, eyes closed for a great deal of the travel).  Well, no I take that back, King Richard would have preferred that Sir and I leave him off about 3,500 feet (at least) prior to where we stopped).

I've clearly digressed however.  When we reached the Paradise Inn (and search and search for a parking space, just like at Old Faithful in Yellowstone ~ yeah, alright, I won't get on that soapbox right now) ~ which is shown in the photo above looking down at it from one of the trails leading off from the property.

The next few photos are taken from the trail above the Inn.  There are several (perhaps six?) originating from the Inn.  I attempted to get closer to the peak.  Well I guess I did get closer, but two of the trails (each about 1/2 mile from where I was) were listed as something falls ... I assumed waterfalls, but never got that far - Rick and Arlo were waiting for me and I knew it would be a looooong and very very very slow climb for me so I turned back about 1/2 way.  

Along the trail that I did attempt were these wonderful wild flower meadows but darned if I could identify any of the flora (I thought the plant in the photo immediately below is some sort of lupine, but not certain).  The other two, I have no clue - what say you Candyce?

Above, just random shots as far as we traveled, from the trail I tried to walk looking at the glacial paths, the Inn and just the absolute beauty of the entire region.  Another one that has left us scratching our heads wondering how we ever got so fortunate.

As we headed towards the National Park we passed this outstandingly blue gorgeous lake (aka Alder Lake) with a very impressive dam (aka Alder Dam) ~ as you see from the distance in the photo below.  

We decided to stop on the way back (well we tried on the way into the park, but there were many people and dogs and boats and vehicles and we surely did not want a repeat of the craziness that we encountered at Lake Roosevelt.)  On our return it was a splendid stop for Sir to take in the beauty (yeah like he cares about the beauty surrounding him right!!!) and have a coooold swim and perhaps go after a stick or three....

All in all it was a terrific trip, a terrific day, in a terrific area with terrific weather .... isn't that terrifically terrific!