Friday, August 13

Mount Rainier......o m g!

We've been visiting National Parks, Monuments, Historical sites, etc. for several years collecting stamps at various spots in our National Parks Passport. We've been to the Grand Canyon, Pipe Springs National Monument, Glen Canyon National Recreation area and today, we traveled to Ashford, WA to see Mount Rainier and get a stamp.

Heading south from Bellevue (our base for all excursions in WA), we stopped just across the street from the Boeing plant and ate lunch at Red Robin Gourmet Hamburgers (you were right, RRD, this place is great!). We were entertained all during lunch with Ryan singing the "Red Robin" commercial....he's got that intonation down pat! Burgers are really good too!

Back on the road we used our Garmin (named "Garmina" for lack of my imagination...) and wound our way through almost 50 miles of forest to the National Park. At the Visitor's Center we watched a short presentation on the creation of the park (it was officially named as a National Park in 1899 - fifth oldest of our National Parks) and the flora and fauna found here. After this, we went hiking to see it for ourselves. We hiked part of Skyway Trail, then on to Myrtle Falls. We saw chipmunks and an elk just resting on a hillside and then we heard an eagle calling. We saw lots of moths and butterflies enjoying the wildflowers. We got to see lots of waterfalls which were created by the melting snow. While at Myrtle Falls we looked around and saw parts of three different water falls....but we did not see the end. I'm sure that we probably drove over some of them without making the connections though....

The roads in the park have lots of bridges over rivers and streams and we even went through a few tunnels. At one point I was trying to get a photo of one of the tunnels and a motor home came through it....Chuck asked when I got back in the car "so, you saw the light at the end of the tunnel?" and I said, "no, I saw the light at the beginning of the tunnel and started running!"

We ended our day in the park by climbing down to river level on the Ohanapecosh River and throwing rocks. We even saw a man trying to catch a fish from up high on the banks, but maybe he was just trying to untangle his fishing line from a bad cast.....he surprised us though!

Saturday we go in to Seattle and meet the Vrshek family for dinner and hear all about their Alaskan Cruise.....we will ride a water taxi to Salty's restaurant...can't wait!

I've updated the photo album .... check it out! http://www.kodakgallery.com/gallery/sharing/shareRedirectSwitchBoard.jsp?token=246656239803%3A763640195&sourceId=533754321803&cm_mmc=eMail-_-Share-_-Photos-_-Sharee