RV trip 2006 - day 38

Day 38 (September 27, 2006) - Mt. Rainier N.P.

Ok, so today we are trying again to visit Mt. Rainier National Park. The weather outlook is excellent, so there should be no surprises. It's a pretty chilly morning but we are hopeful. We leave the campground around 9:00am and we hit the trails almost immediately. Louise Lake, a tiny pool of blue and green water looks very attractive. The only person in sight is an angler. We walk down and start looping around the lake when we meet up with an elderly woman carrying a professional camera on a tripod. She strikes up a conversation with us, she is a retired teacher who now writes the tourist brochures for the National Park and knows everything about Mt. Rainier. She suggests we should go to Snow Lake next, which we just passed about .5 mile before, and take a hike there.

We follow her advice, just like good students, and drive back to the trailhead. It's a moderate to strenuous hike, it goes up and up and up with little down, we pass little Bench lake first and after a lot of climbing, we get to Snow Lake. And what a sight it is! Perfectly placid, with nobody around, it reflects the snow-capped mountains around and it's so green you'd think the trees are actually growing out of it. They call it Snow lake because it's entirely formed by melting glacier waters. I touch the water and it doesn't feel too cold. I am very tempted to take everything off and jump in, just when two other hikers get there. Oh well, next time... We walk around it and stop on the opposite shore when two deer come down to the water to drink exactly in the spot we stood before. Evidently they were waiting for us to leave... We walk back, taking pictures of the meadows and the incredible contrasting colors around us: from the starch white snow caps to the red bushes, the emerald green water and the deep blue sky, it's hard to describe it. Two hundred yards away from the parking lot I get stung by a bee on my hand, and it hurts like hell!

We then continue to the visitor center, where we have lunch and go for another shorter hike to a nearby waterfall. I talk with a ranger and I am told that from where we are the road starts descending steadily for about 12 miles to Longmire, which is our exit from the park. Guess what! This is my chance to make up for the 12 miles I missed yesterday! Nobody is going to talk me out of it.

I quickly change into my biking clothes, pump up my tires and off I go. Mt. Rainier is not really ideal for biking, there is no shoulder, the pavement is irregular and it's so winding that visibility is pretty bad, but still - going downhill I am just as fast as any car coming up behind me. I get to Longmire at the same time as Petr.

We are driving out of Washington state tonight, into Oregon. After all, this state made up for a bad start pretty well, and we leave it thinking that it's not only a great place to visit for vacation, but that it wouldn't be a bad place to live in after all.

Oregon, here we come!