Northwest Adventure - A Closer view of Mt Rainier

Headed for a place called Paradise today, which is at the foot of Mt Rainier and thought we'd head on a bit of a hike.
We stopped at the information center before heading up where we discovered the reason Packwood is fairly run down.

you might need to zoom in on this picture but it shows that Paradise (and this region) often get the most snow of anywhere in the lower 48 states, over 50 feet of snow in an average year and a record of more than 90 feet of snow. They don't even bother thinking about ploughing the roads with that level of snowfall and so for several months of the year the region is pretty much cut of to all but snowmobiles.

In the summer though....

well, in the summer it is one of the most beautiful places I've ever been, check out this picture and quote from John Muir, the most vocal advocate for the American national parks.

Even though this was the end of Summer we were up high enough and enough snow falls in the Winter so that there was still snow on the ground.
Which was a great way to cool off my feet
Becky with Mt Hood in the background
Spot the marmot

Top of the climb, at least as far as we were concerned, at about 6,600 ft. We'd dragged the kids up 1,000ft of elevation so they'd done really well. Dan wanted to go to the top until I explained that there was still 8,000 ft more to climb - pretty deceptive as we felt we were more than half way up.
Although the pictures don't really capture it the flowers were amazing (even for a boy)
And the kids got a physics lessons from a bag of crisps (pV=nRT)

An alpine lake on the way down
Everyone was a little too tired to do another long walk the same day and annoyingly there were lots of flies around which made it uncomfortable to sit and read so we just had a short walk and headed back to the car.
Quick stop at one of the waterfalls on the Stephen's Canyon Road
We also found a playground that we so brand new it looked as though it hadn't even been played in yet, there wasn't even any dirt on it
Then back to Packwood for dinner, at the same place we ate the night before - just because it was edible. We've learned not to expect too much from small town restaurants and then they don't disappoint - this one was pretty good.

And as a binus they had a few Elk around the back of the restaurant tooAnd finally an ice-cream when we made it back to the hotel