Let's Just Go Somewhere: Mount Rainier

On Monday, we decided to do a day trip to Mt Rainier National Park, the entrance of which was about 40 miles away. At 14,410 feet, Mount Rainier is the tallest peak in Washington State and the 17th tallest in the entire United States. Mount Rainier was formed about 500,000 years ago with its last eruption occurring sometime between 1820 and 1894 (according to the National Park Service website).

Warning: You are about to see a lot of pictures of Mount Rainier. You may even start dreaming about Mount Rainier after reading this blog-post because of all the pictures of Mount Rainer. :)

We drove the 13 miles north from Tower Rock to Randle and then headed east on Hwy 12.

As we went through the town of Packwood, we could see Mt. Rainier off to our left.

We used our America the Beautiful pass to enter the park through the Stevens Canyon entrance. Another $15 saved!

The road almost immediately began climbing up...

...through forests full of...

...those tall Washington State trees.

As we approached Box Canyon, we began seeing Mt Rainier again.

We pulled off at Box Canyon to check it out.

Box Canyon is only 15-30 feet wide but is 100 feet deep and was cut out over time by the Muddy Fork Cowlitz River.

You could tell where the rocks along the side and at the bottom have been smoothed out over time by the river. The water is muddy-looking from glacial silt or the force of the glaciers gradually moving over the rocks below. It looks like the Crème Brulee creamer in a cup of Chuck's coffee.

At the overlook on the south side of the road, we walked across rock that had been polished by glacial ice.

We walked a short nature trail by glacial-polished rocks now covered with moss...

...towards another great view of Mt Rainier.

The trail also went through forest that had big trees...

...and big leaves.

After our short hike, we headed further up Stevens Canyon Road...

...which provided excellent views of the other surrounding peaks,

the valley below,

... and, the star of the show: Mt Rainier.

There were beautiful wildflowers along the road as well.

We drove past Reflection Lake which, from the car, had only a small amount of reflection of Mount Rainer.

We turned up the Paradise Loop Road where we came even closer to Mount Rainer.

We turned down the road toward the picnic area and began to look for a table to have our lunch. We think some of the picnic tables were suffering from that dreaded disease: sequestration. :)

We looked around and Chuck spotted the perfect table with a perfect view of... you guessed it... Mount Rainer.

Of course, we had to take our picture at our picture-perfect-picnic-place. Keep in mind that Chuck usually always takes our "self-pictures" because his arms are longer. Attempt #1:

Attempt #2:

Attempt #3:

The other problem we always have with bright daylight pictures of mountains is that the auto-focus on the camera will many times white-out the mountain in the background particularly if there is something in the foreground (like us). So we have to "trick" the camera by tilting it down and then snapping the picture as soon as you tilt it back up. Attempt #1 was a successful trick on the camera but it cut off my chin. Attempt #2 was neither a successful trick nor a successful picture of us. By Attempt #3, we were just laughing our heads off.

After lunch, as we were driving out of the picnic area, we pulled over at this field full of wildflowers...

...with another view of Mount Rainier in the background.

As Chuck can tell you by how many times I ask him to stop for flower shots (and as you probably know by now with all my flower pictures), I really love the wildflowers.

We were going to stop at the Paradise Visitor Center, but the parking lot was full and cars were parked all along down the side of the road past the visitor center.