Mt. Rainier – July 24

No pictures. Yeah, that’s right – no pictures. I had some. Beautiful – Christmas Card – pictures of Mt Rainier. And either the computer or the camera ate them. OH! I was mad. At least I’d been making a habit of downloading pictures every day or so – so I only lost Mt Rainier, and the albino cricket – but more on that later.

The boys and I (sans Taiko) trotted on a day trip to Mt Rainier. We came in the south entrance via Steven’s Canyon. It’s only recently opened due to a very heavy snow fall this winter. On the way in, we stopped at the Grove of the Patriarchs – trees that is. The boys measured 32 steps around the one giant Cedar. Wow. I think they were most impressed with the Nurse Trees. We saw several old ones that had miniature forests on them already.

Then up to Paradise. They’re building a new interpretive center – but it won’t be open until October. The Johnson Center we visited was nice – though we’ve certainly visited better centers at other parks. The boys achieve Junior Ranger status. And we took a short hike through some of the trails at Paradise. About ½ of the walk was on snow at the trails are only just opened after the heavy snows of the winter. We were careful to stay on the paths and off the new baby plants.

At the falls we went too – we saw a marmot. It was on the other side of the falls and further up the trail – but we have binoculars – so it was easy to get up close and personal, without getting up close and personal. It was the hightlight of the visit for me. For the boys? A Snowball fight. Pthththt. Boys.

We didn’t get home until about 10pm – both boys put their seats back and were sound asleep at about 9. And they didn’t even fight it all that much when I told them to. Chuckle.