Mount Rainier National Park

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July 22

Breakfast at our La Push campsite.

We packed up the campsite and at 10:00 a.m. we headed out toward Mount Rainier National Park. Being in the northwest corner of the peninsula, we had two choices for a route to take to get to the southeast corner of the peninsula. East then south past Port Angeles and then south down the only section of Rt. 101 we hadn’t traveled, or south then east. We opted to re-do the already traveled south route down Rt. 101 past the Hoh and Quinault rainforests, then east to save a little time. We chose this faster route because we were meeting people at Mount Rainier and we wanted to take a short detour to the Washington State Capitol building in Olympia, about 3.5 hours away.

At about 2:30 p.m. we arrived at the very impressive Washington state capitol building. We’ve been to about 20 state capitols and this is definitely one of the better ones (we were most impressed with the Iowa state capitol building). The ranger inside was very friendly and advised us on the best way to see the building with just 30 minutes to spend.

At around 3:30 we were on our way to the Paradise Inn at Mt. Rainier National Park. This is one of only two lodges in the park. We very luckily got a room about 2 months prior by emailing the hotel a few times asking if they had any cancellations for the days we wanted. I got an email reply two days after an email saying they had a room if we called soon. I called, and was able to secure a suite…the only room available. So, we invited friends from Portland, Oregon to join us.

We got our first glimpse of Mount Rainier at about 4:00 p.m. and boy, it was impressively massive. We were still over an hour out but the mountain was already the main presence.

Because we arrived later in the day, we got through the normally busy entrance station very quickly. We arrived at the Paradise Inn, at the Henry Jackson Visitors Center in the Paradise section of the park at around 5:30 pm.

Parking here is always crowded, but because we arrived later in the day, we found a good spot near the hotel. Of course, I found the spot only after first driving past the last turnoff into the lot and continuing down the ONE-WAY Road back down the mountain. It was too long a drive for me to drive all the way around the loop, so, Emilie exited the car and I promptly drove in reverse back up toward the parking lot. I don’t believe I hit anybody, most tourists walking in the road were pretty good about getting out of my way.

We checked in (our friends Jeff and Debbie had already checked in but we needed to get a key and a parking pass).

Paradise Inn — Meeting up with Debbie and Jeff on the patio

Jeff had made dinner reservations at the Inn for 8:30 p.m. so we did a few very short hikes around there such as Myrtle Falls, and hung out on the hotel patio in the shadow of Mt. Rainier until dinner.

Bed around 10:30.

July 23

Skyline High Trail

We had breakfast at the inn. Due to COVID there was no restaurant seating for breakfast. There was a café at the lodge where we picked up breakfast items and coffee and ate in the lodge.

After breakfast, Emilie, Debbie, Jeff, and I opted to do the Skyline High Trail with the trailhead right at the Inn. It’s a 5.4-mile loop trail that’s rated as moderately difficult. This amazing trail ultimately proved to be quite strenuous, but it brought us very close to Rainier and up about 2000’ in elevation. Being a beautifully sunny day, we were treated with clear views of this mammoth mountain, and beyond.

This was the busiest 5+ mile trail we have ever done, and at some points it resembled a pilgrimage. I think it’s a popular trail because it’s easy to access, there are great vistas along many points, and there are several escape routes if one chose to not do the whole thing, though it seemed like most people did the whole thing. We chose to do the hike counter-clockwise because going clockwise starts out quite steep right away, and we preferred to ease into the ascent.

The trail provided a great deal of variety of landscape, all of which was absolutely spectacular. We had lunch about halfway through above a popular stop for hikers called Panorama Point, with phenomenal views of not just Mount Rainier but Mt. St. Helens and others from the other side. With about one mile to go, Emilie and I took a short spur trail to Glacier Vista, and lost Jeff and Debbie. We met up at the inn.

Including lunch, the 5.4-mile exhausting hike took us 5.5 hours!

We were all wiped for the day after that hike, and just hung out on the patio in the great weather until dinner at 6:30 pm at the Inn restaurant. We finished the day hanging out in the beautiful, cavernous, timber lodge lounge area.

Bed at 10:00 pm.

July 24

Breakfast at the inn.

We checked out of the Paradise Inn and made our way out of the park, stopping at some final vista points along the drive down the Park’s access road. One stop was at Reflection Lake which, on a good day will reflect the whole of Mount Rainier in its waters. Unfortunately this apparently was not a good day for this. We only got some partial reflections, but still a great stop.

Further down Stevens Canyon Road on our way out of the park we stopped at Box Canyon. We looked over the side of the bridge for a dizzying but awesome view of the Cowlitz River down about 200′. The stone arch bridge itself is a sight to see, too. While there, we took advantage of the restrooms at the small facility.

Once out of the park through the Stevens Canyon entrance, we said goodbye to Jeff and Debbie and we headed towards Boise, Idaho, our planned first stopover on our drive back to Michigan. We need to go back to Mt. Rainier because we only saw one section of this beautiful, massive park. There is much more to see and do than just the Paradise section, which we just did.

Mount Rainier National Park