Mount Rainier

 At 3:05 p.m. on Sunday, July 25, 2021, we flew out of MSP on a Sun Country flight to Seattle.  On this trip everything was more expensive than expected: flights, car rental, hotels.  We had decided, almost on the spur of the moment, to take our first vacation trip in a year-and-a-half.  We had wanted to go to Glacier National Park, instead, but there was no accommodation to be had on short notice.  If it had been available, the price would have been unbelievably high.  Everybody wanted to get out into the National Parks, away from pandemic restrictions.

We got into Sea-Tac Airport around 5:00, and caught the hotel shuttle to the Hampton Inn and Suites, Seattle Airport/28th Avenue.  There is another Hampton Inn near the airport, which caused a little bit of temporary confusion when I called for the shuttle.

The hotel room was pleasant.  I had used Google Street View to do a virtual "walk" to where we wanted to eat dinner, the Mango Thai restaurant.  I recommend doing this.  It's an easy way to get a feel for the route and any problems there might be in finding a place.  We walked there, only to find a handwritten page on the door, saying that they were closed that day, but would be back the next.

We had also researched Sharps Roasthouse, just up the street, so we had dinner there, outside.  Although we were vaccinated against COVID-19, we were still leery of dining indoors, and tried (not always successfully) to avoid it.  

We had a very nice meal there, though I don't remember exactly what we ate.   Then we went back to the hotel and went to bed early.

The next morning, Monday, July 26th, we got up and took the 7 a.m. shuttle back to the airport, where we took the rental car shuttle to the rental car facility.  The shuttle driver provided a lot of useful information about driving out getting around.  The building was nearly empty, and we quickly picked our Nissan Versa at Hertz.  Normally, I think of Hertz as too expensive, but that is what Hotwire--the least expensive of a number of expensive options--gave me.

We drove back to the hotel, had breakfast--a standard buffet--and checked out.

Mount Rainier National Park is square-shaped and has four entrances: essentially, one at each corner.  We would be staying two nights just outside the southeast corner, which is the main entrance and the one most in use.  The principal center of activity in the park is Paradise, which is south-central.  The second-most popular area is around Sunrise, in the northeastern part of the park.  

What seemed to us to be the best plan, coming from the northwest, was to enter the park from the northeast, spend most of the first day around Sunrise, then go around the east and south sides to Ashford, the small town where our hotel was, just outside the southwest (Nisqually) gate of the park.

Getting to Mount Rainier from Seattle involves taking one of a number of fairly complicated routes, via two-lane state and county highways.

We arrived at the Sunrise visitor center, which, at 6400 feet (1950 meters), is the highest point in the part accessible by road, around 10:30.  We spent the rest of the morning and most of the afternoon hiking up to the Mount Fremont fire tower--a 5.5 mile round trip, with a 900-foot change in elevation.

On the way back there we saw a herd of mountain goats, grazing in a meadow far below us.  Shouldn't  they have been above and we below?

After we left Sunrise, on the way down, we stopped at the Sunrise Point overlook, which looks back toward Mount Rainier, and out toward other mountains, including Mount Adams, to the south.

Then, we went all the way down the east side of the park, re-entering at the Stevens Canyon entrance.  Not far from this entrance is the parking lot for the trail to the Grove of the Patriarchs, an island where there are huge, thousand-year-old trees.  To get there, you have to go over a swinging footbridge.  The recommendation was that only one person cross at a time, so there were queues at each end.   A wedding party came back across while we were there.  Apparently, it is a common venue for wedding photos. 

All this had taken longer than expected, so we crossed the southern side of the park as quickly as we could, arriving at Ashford around 7 p.m.

Our cabin at the Paradise Village Hotel was rustic but cute and well-appointed.  The bakery-café there suffered from staffing problems (not at all unusual anywhere since the pandemic), which negatively affected service, including opening hours.

Since we were unable to bring hiking poles in our carryon luggage and hadn’t checked any bags, we had missed having them at Sunrise.  We now rented them at Whittaker Mountaineering, just before it closed at 8 p.m., then had dinner outdoors at their associated Rainier Basecamp—we were the last people served.  I think we had bratwurst.  I remember it wasn’t bad.  We drank a huckleberry cider that was really nice.