Friday, June 13 - Mount Rainier National Park - Washington

I have to let everyone know, we are so glad we stopped and had the brakes fixed.  It makes a world of difference and lots of peace of mind.
Today we crossed the Columbia river into Washington.  It rained all day yesterday and is still raining today, but that's okay, we've had lots of sunshine too.  It stayed an overcast, foggy day, but it was good to be back on the road, with good brakes and our spirits were high.  We found a campground in the park and since most of the road was closed through the mountain, we only stayed one night.

We stayed in the Ohanapecosh Campground.  The name is thought to mean

"standing at the edge"

It is nestled between Douglas Firs, western red cedars 

and western hemlocks in an old forest

The river runs along the woods across the road from us

After checking out our site, we headed into the park

The first thing we saw was the beautiful

Silver Falls

and then through the mountain tunnel

The higher we went the fog got worse

Even though 3/4 of the road was still under snow,

we could make it to the first Visitors Center names

"Paradise"

These two pictures are from one side of box canyon

This is the other side of the bridge looking down

at box canyon

You can see it widened and...

You can tell the roads are getting slippery

Reflection Lake

2 pictures of Snow Lake 

The scenery was beautiful

but with snow flurries coming down, you knew 

it was getting cold

This is what greeted us from the visitor center

They actually were expecting 4 1/2 inches of snow

and we were warned the fog and snow was

coming in quickly, so we opted out of the movie

and headed back to our campsite.  This was

as far as the road was open anyway and they

still had 6 feet of snow on the ground at the center.

The fog just keeps coming

but we made it back safe and sound and

happy we got to see what we did.

We could only go 5,400 feet up it

was 14,200 feet high at its peak.

You can only travel around the outside of the mountain and as high

as 6.400 feet.  

They say to enjoy the beauty around the mountain as the majority

of the time, people do not see the peak.  It is so high it forms it's own

clouds when the weather doesn't do it for them. 

The rest of the road will open in July and close again on October 1

as winter returns to the high peaks.