Thanos was always right.
After making our way around Mt St Helen, we headed North to Randle and Packwood to gather items and prepare for Mt Rainier. Our plan was to possibly spend an extra day around Mt Rainier forest as it had plenty of trails to explore.
Our first lesson was Mt Rainier is clearly the more popular and organised of the mountains. We had a special front gate entrance and Ranger booth to stop at. Here, our Annual Parks pass of $80, which up until this point has meant we did not need to pay the regular $5 parking fee every time we stopped in a National Park, definitely paid for itself. A $30 entry fee to go into Mt Rainier National Park. We thought that was a little steep at the time. Our pass let us continue, so we began the winding road towards the information centre located at a place called 'Paradise'.
As we wound around the roads we read a little more about Mt Rainier and sadly they did not permit any overnight camping in the entire park if it was outside a designated camping ground. We wondered if we could sneak around a corner somewhere, but sure enough, with their well maintained facilities, nothing could be accessed. So we continued our path to Paradise to see what we could find.
Paradise is an interesting choice for a name, it may very well have been due to the view. A spectacular, close up of a formiddable snow capped mountain. Sadly to us, it felt Paradise had been lost with the invasion of tourists. It's hard to be hypocrite's but we felt suffocated by the numbers. Quite literally, five thousand other observers were taking in the scenery and another five thousand trying to find a car park. This on a Tuesday. The facility was rapidly expanding its carparks to cater for all of the guests. We chose to drive a little further away to avoid the crowd.
After some lunch we opted for a short waterfall trail which turned out to be a delight. We then made our way out of the secluded Park area and took the first left we could find along a State road. A little winding and gravel and we made our way atop a nearby hill looking back at Mt Rainier, it's Paradise and restricted camping. We took our time with dinner, mushroom white sauce with chicken, mash potato and green beans. With not a soul about, maybe Thanos did have it right all along. Less people is a lot nicer.
Our first lesson was Mt Rainier is clearly the more popular and organised of the mountains. We had a special front gate entrance and Ranger booth to stop at. Here, our Annual Parks pass of $80, which up until this point has meant we did not need to pay the regular $5 parking fee every time we stopped in a National Park, definitely paid for itself. A $30 entry fee to go into Mt Rainier National Park. We thought that was a little steep at the time. Our pass let us continue, so we began the winding road towards the information centre located at a place called 'Paradise'.
As we wound around the roads we read a little more about Mt Rainier and sadly they did not permit any overnight camping in the entire park if it was outside a designated camping ground. We wondered if we could sneak around a corner somewhere, but sure enough, with their well maintained facilities, nothing could be accessed. So we continued our path to Paradise to see what we could find.
Paradise is an interesting choice for a name, it may very well have been due to the view. A spectacular, close up of a formiddable snow capped mountain. Sadly to us, it felt Paradise had been lost with the invasion of tourists. It's hard to be hypocrite's but we felt suffocated by the numbers. Quite literally, five thousand other observers were taking in the scenery and another five thousand trying to find a car park. This on a Tuesday. The facility was rapidly expanding its carparks to cater for all of the guests. We chose to drive a little further away to avoid the crowd.
After some lunch we opted for a short waterfall trail which turned out to be a delight. We then made our way out of the secluded Park area and took the first left we could find along a State road. A little winding and gravel and we made our way atop a nearby hill looking back at Mt Rainier, it's Paradise and restricted camping. We took our time with dinner, mushroom white sauce with chicken, mash potato and green beans. With not a soul about, maybe Thanos did have it right all along. Less people is a lot nicer.
Its possible that the wildfires are concentrating all the tourists on those parks not on fire!!
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Who was your English teacher...not your father.
I love the reflection in the river. Some great shots.
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