We headed up to Mt. Rainier today. It was a very nice drive — about 1.5 hours of actual driving and .5 hours of traffic to contend with. 😉 We went up to the Nasqually entrace, per the suggestion of National Geographic. Our van was *full* with us, Steph and Shawn joining.
Upon reaching the entrance … which was a mountainous road getting just to there, we winded our way up the mountain to Paradise — the visitor center also suggested by National Geographic. Mt. Rainier is incredibly beautiful!
Paradise sits 5600 feet above sea level, at least at the top of the visitor center. That was our “hike”… up the circular entrance to the top for a “birds eye” view of the mountain and surrounding landscape.
We all took advantage of the free telescopes and were lucky enough to be pointed to hikers, way up at the top of the mountain! They were little tiny black specs in the white snow. Very cool!
Of course, we had to take pictures of us all against the mountain!
As we were coming up the mountain, we noticed all sorts of stop offs, but we didn’t stop as we were all hungry and wanted to get to the top. On the way back though, we stopped at each one.
Such as … a waterfall…
And the practically dried up river bed!
And Christine Falls…
