Washington Trip Part 2: Mount Rainier National Park

On Day 3 we drove from North Cascades to Mount Rainier National Park! We arrived to the park and drove to the Visitor Center which is in the Paradise area of the park, and we were instantly overwhelmed with the amount of people and the crowds. It was intense! We were not loving the chaos of it all... It was super intense. So, we didn't spend much time there... We did wait in the line to talk to the Park Rangers, and we were able to ask about a few hikes we wanted to do.  Unfortunately, a few of the hikes we were interested in were still under about 15 feet of snow, so they weren't possible... But we got some ideas for a few other things to do, and we found out which areas were open and which areas were closed due to snow.

Mount Rainier! Usually there's a bunch of cool trails you can take around here (this is by the Visitor Center), but there was still WAY too much snow.  So, people had their skis and were walking up that little hill there and then skiing down. 

Mount Rainier!

We drove further into the park to the Ohanapecosh area, and we stopped to hike Box Canyon Trail, which includes a bridge over a canyon that is 180 feet deep, and at the bottom of the canyon is a river!

This is looking over the edge of the bridge, down into the canyon!

Part of the trail was blocked off due to a big ol' tree that fell on the trail... 

After that trail, we went to the Grove of the Patriarchs. This was a super cool hike where you see some huge trees that are over 1000 years old!  At the beginning of the hike you  have to cross this long and narrow suspension bridge, and the bridge can only handle one person at a time... so there's a line of people on both sides and everyone has to work together and take turns so that only one person is on the bridge at a time. When it was my turn, it was pretty cool!  I was trying to walk smoothly so that the bridge wouldn't move a ton, but my goodness it sure liked to move all over the place no matter what.  After I got to the other side, someone from that side took their turn, and then it was McGee's turn!  I got some good pictures of him on the suspension bridge. The trees at the Grove of the Patriarchs were amaaaaazing, and it was a really nice area!  It was pretty crowded, but still cool.

There's Kevin just starting to cross on the other side!  And you can kinda see the line of people waiting too. 

Here he's about halfway!! 

Almost there! 

He made it! And here's part of the line of people waiting their turns to cross back to the other side. 

And here's one of the enormous 1000+ year old trees!

These two are growing together! 

After we were done with that, we decided to drive to a few viewpoints, and then finally head out of the park and get to our little cabin that we found on AirBnB!  We were SO ready for a shower, because we had been hiking for 3 days without a shower. Well.. this is when we ran into Bump 1 during our trip (remember I mentioned in the previous post that we had 2 bumps in an otherwise perfect trip?).  Well, this cabin was SMALL... and we were totally ready for small, but this cabin was so small that you couldn't stand up in the shower... It was an A-frame cabin, and the bathroom was on the side, so literally the showerhead was at about chest level and you could NOT stand up or you'd hit your head.  So, I showered first... and the water pressure was super bad so just barely over a trickle of water came out, and you had to bend your knees and do a squat the entire time or you'd hit your head on the slanted ceiling, plus if you wanted your hair rinsed you had to squat even lower.  And the hot water lasted about 2 minutes, and after that it was icy cold... So... not amazing.  And... another thing was the bedroom situation.  The bedroom was in the loft area of the cabin... but there were no stairs.  To get up to the bedroom you had to climb up this SUPER rickety wobbly ladder that felt like it was going to break, and then when you got to the top of the ladder you had to immediately jump to the bed because there was just a wall area in front of the ladder (and the bed took up the whole floor... ), and you couldn't stand up in the loft either. So... it was just really uncomfortable and kinda scary.  We were way more comfortable in our tiny 2-person tent when we were camping.

The cabin. We thought it was adorable!  We were so hopeful... 

We didn't love sleeping there that night, and the house didn't even feel safe (the neighborhood didn't seem great, and the downstairs window was broken).  So... we were supposed to stay there two nights, but on the morning of Day 4 I kinda jokingly said, "Wanna just head to Olympic National Park?", and then McGee responded "I kinda do...", and then we looked at each other and decided to rearrange our trip.  We decided to head back into Mount Rainier National Park for the first part of the day and see a few more things there (hopefully before it got super crowded again), and then drive to Olympic National Park a day earlier than we'd planned. We just decided that this was our VACATION, and there was no way we should spend another night in that cabin if we didn't feel comfortable or even safe. Honestly, looking back on it, I am SO beyond glad that we decided to leave.  The rest of our trip was amazing, and we turned that one Bump into more time at Olympic National Park, and we looooooved our time there.  Oh, and one SUPER cool thing that happened during our Day 4 morning at Mount Rainier was that we saw a marmot!!  It was just wandering around in the snow, and I was SO excited to see one!!  I'd really been hoping to see one because I heard there are a lot of them in Mount Rainier National Park!!  It was adorable.  I didn't get a picture of it (I was too busy freaking out!), but here is a picture of a marmot:

They're pretty big!  Like I'd say maybe around the size of a cat (not a kitten). 

And here are a few more pictures from the morning of Day 4!

The Visitor Center wasn't open yet (it was morning!), so the area wasn't crowded at all yet! Much better... 

That says Elevation 14,410 feet! 

Mount Rainier!!  It's so beautiful!! 

It was a lovely morning and I'm glad we spent part of that day in Mount Rainier National Park, and then I'm glad that we drove to Olympic National Park that day instead of waiting for the following day!