Mt. Rainier National Park

After coming down off of Cascade Pass, we immediately started south towards Mt Rainier National Park.  The drive from North Cascades, back through Seattle, to the White River Campground on the east side of Mt Rainier took us about four hours.  We were greeted with much different weather...cold and a light sleet as we were setting up camp for the night.  Luckily, we were able to buy some firewood and got a nice campfire started as the sun went down to stay warm.  Wednesday morning we woke up to near perfect weather, blue skies over Mt Rainier.  From our campsite, we decided to hike into Glacier Basin.  The trail followed the White River towards Mt Rainier.  The contrast of the white glaciers against the blue skies and surrounding evergreens was a beautiful sight.  After about 3 miles and an 1800' climb we arrived in Glacier Basin and of course had to plant the Vols flag...

After our hike to Glacier Basin we got packed up at camp and headed for the south side of the mountain to do a tourist visit of the rest of the National Park before continuing south towards Oregon.  Incredibly, the weather changed almost immediately as we drove around the southern edge of Mt Rainier.  The blue skies turned overcast and then a light drizzle.  Our first stop was at the Paradise Valley visitors center.  This is typically where Mt Rainier climbers base from.  Paradise Inn is also here. Usually you can get great views of Rainier with very little effort from the Inn but no such luck for us.  After picking up a couple souvenirs we continued on our way.  We made stops at Narada Falls and Christine Falls on our way out of the park.

Leaving Mt Rainier National Park we took a beautiful drive through Gifford Pinchot National Forest and the South Cascades.  About an hour into our drive we lucked into a turnoff for Mt. St Helens.  We didn't originally plan on seeing St Helens in an effort to get closer to Oregon for the night but we couldn't pass it up.  The drive into St Helens Volcanic Monument was pretty surreal.  The aftermath of the eruption is still very visible.  It was really cool to learn about the history of the volcano and the destruction and now the regeneration of the landscape.  After spending a little bit of time at Windy Ridge, we continued south towards Oregon.