Brent and Ashley's reception was in Yakima, so we flew into Pasco, Washington and drove west from there. We love 1 terminal airports so much better than the big ones. We got in late Thursday night and found a campsite just below White Pass outside Mount Rainer National Park. In the morning, we drove in and got a campsite that we loved and stayed at for 3 nights. It was a walk-in campsite on the edge of the campground, quiet, with a bathroom nearby. What more could we ask for.
Friday we went for a loop hike from Tipsoo Lake, which took us past lakes and had great views of the mountain. I guess we were lucky to see the mountain, but as you can see the clouds did roll in later in the afternoon. Before that, it was nice to go for a wade in the glacier water and then it was just right once it was overcast.
Friday night was the reception so we drove back to Yakima, then back to our campsite. Saturday morning you can tell what Eliza was doing, her Bumbo is the only way to keep her still when she is eating so yes, we had to take it with us. We kept thinking that people would think we were crazy for wearing sweatshirts and hats, but to St. George people it was nice and cold.
Eliza was soooo good the whole trip even though we were in the car a lot. She found lots of trees to play around and dirt to play with and sand and sticks and rocks and on and on.
She loves her backpack too. We went to Paradise Saturday morning and hiked around in the clouds and then we hiked a 3+ mile section of the Wonderland Trail (yeah only a small fraction of the 93 miles around the mountain). There were waterfalls and huge trees and glaciers.
Finally, at the end of the day as we were going back to camp, the clouds broke and we saw the mountain up close. That mountain is huge! Sunday we drove down to see one of it's little relatives, Mount St. Helens. It is crazy to see all the exhibits and movies about what happened back in 1980. You can see that Eliza was just happy to get out of the car and run!
Our favorite campsite.
There was a trail that Eliza and I made where we left our campsite and walked only on fallen trees all around the forest and then came back to our campsite another way. We felt like Ewoks. Monday we went on two more hikes, played in the water a little and then drove back to Pasco. We had a great trip and would recommend Mount Rainer to anyone who has not been there, it was beautiful!
