Mt. Rainier

This past Saturday, we headed to Mt. Rainier, another national park in our backyard that we have woefully neglected for all these ten years. We've visited Mt. Rainier only twice since moving to Seattle: the first time was accidental and occurred during our first year in the area whilst attempting to explore our new surroundings; the second time was a few years ago when we enjoyed a free, ranger led snowshoeing excursion at Sunrise.

This time we had planned on exploring the Paradise area, but when we got there it was so crowded that we decided to keep driving. After a lovely drive across the southern section of the park, we wound up stopping in the Ohanapecosh area, in the southeast corner, for some hiking. Our first hike was to Silver Falls, along the Ohanapecosh River.

Honestly, the river and our surroundings were much more impressive than the waterfall. The hike was of easy to moderate difficulty (paved trails, 300 ft elevation gain) and just gorgeous. As a matter of fact, we were enjoying ourselves so much on this 3 mile loop trail that we decided to extend it another 2 miles by taking a detour to the Grove of the Patriarchs, an island of towering, thousand-year-old Douglas firs and western red cedar trees.

Though these trees were enormous, we kept comparing them to the size of the giant sequoias we saw at Mariposa Grove in Yosemite National Park a few years ago. Although Douglas firs and western red cedars are not giant sequoias, we are not arborists and those sequoias were freaking HUGE! and have made an indelible impression on us. We imagine all large trees we find in the future will always be compared to those amazing giant sequoias at Mariposa Grove. Though unimpressed with the Grove of the Patriarchs, the Ohanapecosh River that surrounded the island was beautiful. While the "one person at a time" suspension bridge was occupied with families taking advantage of some late summer hiking, we skipped rocks and waited patiently for our turn across, absorbing our surroundings and one of the last outdoor summer activities before another long, dreary Seattle winter.