Pacific Northwest Vakay Day 3

Day 3: Well here we are folks. The next couple of days on our trip might have been my favorites! So let's dive in, shall we?

Day three brought us to Mt. Rainier National Park. Can I just say-WOW!!!!! I would say I didn't have huge expectations going into it because after all, the whole park was based on one mountain. I have seen countless mountains in my life, and they are all cool and unique in their own way. But why would one need a whole national park? We got to the first stop to stretch our outrageously sore legs and walked out to the back porch to enjoy the rocking chair. Look what we saw!!!!

Holy amazing!!! I was not expecting that! And I didn't even see it until I sat down! I was beginning to think this was going to be a pretty awesome day. We got to the first viewpoint and headed down to the creek. And again, another amazing view of this mountain peak.

There were many scenic point for us to get out and enjoy the view (and mostly try to stretch our legs!). 

Even though our legs were tired, we thought it was time for another hike. A helpful ranger laid out the rest of our day for us. He gave us a hike that had us climbing up Mt. Rainier. Remember the snow we saw the day before on our hike? That was NOTHING compared to this!!! And did you see we are wearing shorts!?! It was 75 degrees after all.

Almost the entire trail was snow packed! 

But check out this view!

Here is Mt. St. Helens.

This is how far we were able to hike. We made it about as far as we could before they recommended snow boots-which we did not bring along. 

There were waterfalls everywhere!

We hiked ran down the snow packed mountain. It was one of the neatest things we did on the whole trip. It was so fun running down the mountain together, in our shorts, in the snow.

Once we climbed down from the mountain we drove to another area of the park. It was also beautiful, but completely different than the mountain view.  

Matt took the time to skip some rocks in the river. 

We saw some really tall trees.

Matt basically saved the park.

We were able to see pretty exceptional things.

Including a gorge that was 115 feet down to the water.

Then we drove up to Sunrise Lodge. The ranger told us we had not lived until we saw Mt. Rainier from Sunrise. I couldn't believe I had yet to live all these years. So we knew we had to get up there-I was ready to live!

All kidding aside, it was a pretty spectacular view! We were able to see a couple glaciers from this angle. 

The wildflowers were also gorgeous!

Two full days of hiking gave us some very tired legs. We stopped to eat, and I must say the people of Covington, WA are some of the nicest people I have ever met. They gave us a recommendation we cashed in later during our trip... Stay tuned for the next leg of our trip-we leave the national park tour for a couple days and check out the city life. Enjoy!