Saturday, July 8th, 2023

Starting mileage: 7060, Distance travelled: 369

Miles hiked: 2 miles

We spent the morning agonizing over whether to take the shorter route to the super popular west side of Mount Rainier National Park where we might not get in at all and the slightly less-popular east side which meant much more driving but a better chance of actually seeing the mountain. We were also anxious about arriving before the visitors center closed and missing our chance to get our passport stamped and buy our national park stickers. We had quite a long drive from Forks, WA. On the way, we drove by Lake Crescent on the north side of Olympic National Park. It was amazingly clear and aquamarine.

After a very long day of driving, we reached a ridiculous twisty, turny drive with multiple hairpin turns up to the Sunrise visitor center, the highest point reachable by car at Mount Rainier National Park. The videos below give you a basic sense of the amazing views and adventure of driving up 3000 ft.

Videos

We arrived so late in the day that we were at risk of missing getting our cancellation stamp at the visitor center so we went straight there. There was a really great self-guided nature trail that took us about 2 miles around to get views of both Mount Rainier and the Cascades. We learned a bunch about the ecology of the area, especially how the flowers and trees survive the harsh subalpine environment.

The most striking thing was the number of different flowers in bloom simultaneously. We captured a few on camera.

In the last stretch of our trip today, we drove within about 20 miles of Mount St. Helens but didn’t visit. We did catch a distant glimpse of it, however.

We stayed at a Comfort Inn so we could finally get a decent shower and the kids got to play in the pool very late (10pm).