At 9:00 we had no plans. By 10:00 we were on our way. Yet another pleasant day and we decided to go for a long drive. It's been a long time since we've been to Rainier together and a very long time since we'd driven the whole loop.
The Park was metering traffic at White River, which meant a long wait, but this probably made it less of a zoo up at Sunrise. We stopped at the snack bar for a simple lunch before heading on around the mountain.
I'm always impressed by how big this mountain feels, especially from close up. I guess most mountains are massive, but when they have broad shoulders and stand alone, they really stand out. Rainier was in and out of clouds all day, but we got plenty of great views.
Paradise was crowded, but we were still able to grab a parking spot in the top lot without much of a wait. We kept our exercise simple - the short paved walk to Myrtle Falls. Pretty much any other route would still have involved snow. The new visitors center (new, at least for us) was nice and the old lodge was even better. I still have visions of entering the lodge through snow tunnels when I first visited as a child (one must always be a little skeptical of such memories - brains can create data as easily as they can store it).
It always seems like a long drive back. We had dinner on the patio of the Copper Creek Inn, then headed to Des Moines so M could swing by her office and clear her floor of stacks of paper so the carpet could be cleaned. Why the carpet has to be clean (or even gets dirty in the first place) if it's covered in paper is beyond me.
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