Mount Rainier National Park

I’ll have to be honest with you – going in to this trip I fully expected this park to be my least favorite of the four we were visiting. By the end of the trip it was hands down my MOST favorite! So much diversity, great hiking, adventure – and not to mention amazing pictures. The image below is one of the first things I photographed when we arrived – Christine Falls. Just a short walk off the road and it does not disappoint. The color contrast was stunning with the stone, water, and trees/mosses!

Next up was Narada Falls – this one had a slightly longer and steep walk to arrive at the view point. I apologize in advance for the photo quality the spray from the waterfall was constant and VERY cold! Hence the water on lens effect shown below. We enjoyed it from a slightly different vantage point for a while before trekking back up!

Next we had our second wildlife sighting (first was a chipmunk :)) Saw this black bear munching on his breakfast on the side of the road. The close up pictures were taken through the window – so don’t worry we were not in danger.

This last one has photo credit to Abby! Some of her very first pictures with a real camera. I love this one because you can see him looking up through the grass and the focus is perfect. Abby is a natural!!

You can see this beautiful summit from many places in the park and its one of the biggest reasons I loved it so much!

Lucky we got into the park so early – the wind was picking up a little and I expect we would not have been able to capture this beautiful reflection for much longer! Reflection lakes!

These next two are photo credit to Abby too! She has much better balance than me and she actually walked out on a long log into the lake to capture these. These were taken from a Bench lake. Despite being listed as a “destination” on this hike the trails were VERY overgrown and steep, requiring scrambling up rocks. And the look outs at the bottom were non-existent! Hence the need to trek out on a log to get a view of the peak. Abby says she likes this one better than the one from Reflection Lake – and I have to agree!

This is a view of a portion of Bench lake from above as we were climbing up and down. Views were amazing from everywhere!!

We made our way to the end of the trail – after several much needed breaks – and were rewarded with crystal clear lake views. Snow Lake was so clear we could see clear to the bottom despite its depth! And the water was a beautiful shade of blue.

This view reminded me so much of Emerald Lake in CO! Hikes to alpine lakes nestled in the cove of a mountain ranges never get old!

View of the big guy on our way back!

Next up was our hike to Myrtle Falls! This hike was marked as Easy on my itinerary because it was so short – little did I know it was almost COMPLETELY snow covered!! Definitely happy to have my spikes, and happy that Abby had hers as well. We were far more sure footed than some of our fellow tennis shoe toting hikers.

Here is my absolute favorite view of Rainier!! I’ve seen variations of this picture on other people’s blogs and wanted it for myself. I was so disappointed when we arrived because we couldn’t see Myrtle Falls. Abby even crossed a treacherous bridge in search of it! Then we saw some people climb down over a ridge and behold the trail hidden by the huge banks of snow! Luckily the trail down was dry and we could safely climb down and check it out. We also engaged in a customary snowball fight before trekking back down. You can ask Abby who won 🙂

Day 2 of our trip involved an ambitious hike in the Sunrise area of Mount Rainier. Unfortunately I wasn’t up for the whole thing but we did get some amazing views from the circuit we did complete! This ridge, when we first passed it, was mostly cloud covered. When we looped back the clouds had started to clear and you could see more of the peak!

After the more strenuous hike we drove on over to Tipsoo Lake. This wasn’t as exciting or breathtaking in its beauty but we made the circuit around the muddy trail.

The last part of this park was the Grove of the Patriarchs. It was a good precursor to our later visit to Redwood National Park. Had to circle around for a while to find parking, and we ended up across the river. No complaints as we got some great views from the bridge!

Washington state has continued to amaze me with the beauty of its national parks! It only has three but its up there in splendor with California and Alaska!! Loved exploring Mount Rainier and cannot wait to return and see even more of it!