Year Three - Day Sixty-Seven

Sam's View

Today we headed to mt rainier! We got some really good pictures. We also saw a lot of snow, waterfalls, we even saw a gorge that was 112 ft deep!

Summer's View

Today we drove down to Mount Rainier National Park.  It is about a two hour drive from our campground.  What a beautiful park!  Some of the trees in there are enormous, and it looks so lush and green!  Mount Rainier was in fine form, showing off her snowcaps in the sun!  :)

We drove in through the Nisqually entrance, and basically did a driving tour with lots of stops along the route for mini hikes and photo ops.  Some awesome waterfall action and glacier views of Mount Rainier.  At the Paradise Visitor Center, there was still plenty of snow on the ground for everyone to play in, and they were hard at it!

 

 

Along the way, Sam spotted a pika climbing up some rocks, we saw several birds, and we spotted a mule deer leisurely walking along the edge of the woods on one side trail we walked.  The rivers and creeks were gushing along with snow melt, and they were all gray water from the silt in the runoff.  Mount Rainier is an active volcano, so a lot of the area showed old lava flows and recovery from the damages from it.  Some big flooding in 2006 did a lot of damage to the surrounding forests, and there was lots of evidence of that in the flood zones.

On the drive home, Sam took a nap, so it was a good workout day for him!  :)