We enjoyed a few days at Mt. Rainier, which became a National Park in 1899 (the fifth one) in a system that now has 60 National Parks. This is our 50th National Park to visit – we’re now in the home stretch of remaining parks to see.
Mt. Rainier is magnificent, and it quickly became one of our favorite stops. We drove up to the visitor center twice and on both days the clouds parted occasionally so that we could see the peak, which left us breathless at its majesty.
Get this: this visitor center is at an altitude of 5,400’ and I thought of Yosemite, where the valley visitor center is at 4,000’ and its valley peaks are 4,000’ above that. But the top of this mountain is 10,000’ higher than the visitor center! We couldn’t stop from gazing with amazement at this impressive mountain.
One of the hikes we took was to see Narada Falls. It was delicate. It was simple. It spread-out across the rock like a tapestry. Below that vantage point was a link to the famous Wonderland Trail and we wanted to get on it for at least a few steps. That trail circles the entire mountain, 93 miles in total, and has a cumulative altitude gain of 22,000’ as it ascends and descends over so many ridges. Even though I loved backpacking in the Sierra Nevada as a youth, this is a trail I will leave to our son Chris who is hoping to hike it someday.
We stayed outside the park, at Harmony Lake, at a RV camping spot with a lakeside view, which was lovely and relaxing. We had a water issue inside the trailer (our mistake) which made for some excitement, but it all got resolved just fine.
With Mount Rainier in our rear view mirror, we’ll skip past Seattle for now, and head next to North Cascades National Park near the border of Canada, as the visitor center is only open on the weekends after mid-September.
