Mount Rainier National Park

In preparation for some glorious sights on our road trip to Mount Rainier today, I have finally purchased a digital camera of my own: a Canon Power-Shot 850. Now I don't have to keep borrowing Nate's camera when I want to indulge my inner shutter-bug. I tend to take pictures of anything and everything that catches my eye, and just sort out the good ones later, so Nate rarely gets his camera back ;-)

At the moment we are winding our way through the Cascade Range on WA-161, circling around Rainier on our approach to the park area called Paradise... a place I think will prove aptly named. The beautifully verdant scenery we've beheld so far is definitely proving the axiom that its not the destination that matters so much as the journey to get there.

I do feel like I'm back in that flight simulator though, on these twisty roads, and better stop writing or I might get car-sick here... We're off the grid anyways, so nothing I write now will get published until our return.

Nearly There: Crawling up the paths of Mt. Rainier itself. Frustratingly, we are stopped on the road with a bunch of other sightseers, behind a bulldozer trying to clear it. Tom starts a brief snowball fight as we get out to stretch.

Not long later and the road is clear again.

The temperature is dropping fast as we meander up this massive edifice, and the snow cover is rising. A crisp aroma of evergreen permeates the cold mountain air, nipping at our senses. Truly awesome vistas greet us from this altitude, especially the cloud-crowned peak of Mount Rainier looming just over our shoulders.

On our trip upward, we make a stop at Narada Falls, where we slip and slide down the serpentine trail leading to its fullest cascade (note to self: next time pack hiking boots instead of Skechers). Standing in a cloud of mist from the roaring cataract that looms before us, rainbows irridescing all around, I am in awe of the infinite power and beauty Mother Nature can birth. Surrounded by all this majesty, I lift my camera to take one last defining shot... and its battery dies.

Dammit.

Briefly tired from the climb back up the trail, we pile into the car again and arrive at Paradise a little later, 5,400 feet up and still 9,000 feet from the summit. Mount Rainier's regal snow-capped peak dominates the northern sky, truly king of its domain. My camera revives long enough to capture a single shot of this marvelous sight. That's okay, we have Tom with us, as near to a professional photographer as I've ever personally known. We get plenty of pictures to sate our innate human desire to capture enduring moments of time.

As we are leaving Paradise, Tom tries to photograph a woodland bird perching smartly on top of a nearby car, but the avian takes exception to this and swoops at him angrily. Guess the little guy's camera-shy!

A short way back down the road we came up, we've stopped at a pocket overlook showing us the road wandering far below us. Around this a scree field blends into a wide conifer valley, culminating in the rare panorama of Rainier's perfectly cloudless peak. Tom breaks out his wide-angle lense for maximum capture, then we honor this miracle of nature with a snowball-chucking contest from the overlook's ledge. Quite a long drop, that.

We treat ourselves to a quick stop at Christine Falls, a few miles later. White water cascades from a stone crevice, framed by a rock-lined bridge, and plummets 500 feet into a pool of froth below. Truly awesome. Waterfalls, restless monuments of ever-changing complexity, are my favorite spectacle of nature.

Our journey through the national park comes to a close with a jaunt across the pearly gray riverbed at the base of the mount, where we cross over a log bridge before truly getting our exercise hiking the long woodland trail toward Carter Falls, that parallels the rushing rapids it results in. We turned back before reaching the falls themselves, fairly worn out and wondering if perhaps we missed it somehow, but even without reaching our goal the peaceful footwork through moss-covered trees and glistening water-kissed boulders is definitely my idea of a perfect workout.

The sunset bathes Mount Rainier in its dying rays as we reach the riverbed again, painting its features with red-gold highlights. Before our reluctant departure, our one remaining camera captures this final moment of our excellent day.

I have decided that the prime situation for that one place you'd spend the rest of your days happily, is in an area like the coast of Washington, with all of these enriching experiences and pristine wilderness mere hours away. There is much more of the world to see, for us both, but Tom has made an excellent choice in this milestone on his journey. I am glad for the opportunity to share it alongside these two friends, for even so brief a time.

As we are driving out of the park, the pleasant digitized voice of our GPS device chimes, "At your earliest opportunity, turn around."

Indeed.