We had been wanting to go to Mount Rainier ever since we moved here and so we finally made it out there yesterday. The weather was great for going to Mount Rainier; mostly sunny with highs in the upper 70s. We invited one of our friends to go with us too, so that was fun. We left at 10:15am and didn't get to the park until about 1:00pm, after driving over 90 miles. Traffic was quite bad near Puyallup, which slowed us down. We stopped in a small town just outside the park to eat lunch and so I could get over being car-sick. This one place we tried to eat at only had two employees there (most likely the owners) and they never even acknowledged our presence, which was quite strange. So we gave up on that place and went across the street to a burger place, which was actually pretty good. I was glad to stop for a while after being car-sick from all the windy roads and stopping at stop lights all the time.

Anyway, we finally made it to Mount Rainier and were completely blown away by all the natural beauty everywhere we looked. We figured we would hike on one of the many trails there and have a chance to see some fields of wildflowers. Unfortunately, despite the fact that it was about 80º outside and it's the middle of summer, there was still several feet of snow in most places. Most of the trails were still covered with about 4' of snow. It was really weird walking on all that snow and wishing I had shorts on instead of pants because the air was so warm. We could also tell that the air was thinner at higher elevations. So, we didn't actually do much hiking, but the views were just spectacular. There were creeks everywhere you looked from all the snow melting, which created several waterfalls. One of the highlights was Reflection Lake, which will make a perfect reflection of the mountain and all the trees later in the summer when the lake is completely melted. There were still patches of snow sitting on top of the lake. There were several miles of roads between the different camping spots and visitors center, so it took us a while to drive around the park. There were also some canyons with rushing rivers going through them. We started heading back around 4:30pm and got back around 6:30pm. We were on the south side of the mountain and couldn't see Seattle at all. Next time we go, we'll have to go to one of the trails on the north side of the mountain if there are any. It was a lot of fun though and I'm really glad we went with our friend. We definitely plan on going again in the next couple of months and actually getting to hike on a trail.