Mt. Rainier National Park and Leavenworth, Washington with Rachael

Mt. Rainier National Park

While we have good internet connection, I am going to try to get our pictures from Mt. Rainier posted. We stayed at Silver Beach Resort on Rimrock Lake. It was about 30 minutes from the closest entrance to Mt. Rainier NP. It was a great campground. Our site was 30 feet from the beach and maybe 50 from the water and we were there for three nights. Our first day there we inflated the kayak and took it out on the lake. There was a small island not far from camp so circled it. We were able to just leave the kayak on the rug outside the camper and every day when we came in from hiking on Mt. Rainier we took it out for our upper body workout. It was lots of fun and very relaxing.

Our view from the dining table.

We didn't want our chairs to drown!

Relaxing after kayaking!

Our first day in the National Park we went to Paradise and hiked the Nisqually Trail, suggested by the campground owner. It was beautiful and had amazing views of Mt. Rainier and lots of wildflowers.

 

That's the end of our first day on Mt. Rainier. The second day, we decided to drive around the mountain to the Sunrise area because the people who ran the campground said that the view from that side of the mountain was completely different from the view at Paradise. It was a longer drive and that side of the mountain had a lot more smoke than the Paradise side but they view was different. The glaciers are much larger on the Sunrise side of the mountain. It looks a little bit like a giant snow cone.

The smoke was so thick that it was not nearly as spectacular and it would be on a clear day but you can see that the view is very different. The glaciers cover much more of the mountain on this side. Can you see the snow cone?

Well that's the end of our Mt. Rainier trip. The next day we moved on to Wanapum State park near Vantage, Washington. From there we drove in to Wenatchee to see our niece, Rachael. From there we drove to a cute little Bavarian village called Leavenworth where we had lunch at Gustav's. Here are a few pictures of our day. It was so good to see Rachael. And the flowers were gorgeous.