There are so many things I want to say about Mt Rainier National Park that I don’t even know where to start. While I was doing my research on Washington while still back at home, I noticed that this was the most recommended National Park of all and it would pop up on absolutely every list that I clicked on. I’ve seen a few photos from the park and had a vague idea on what hikes we wanted to go on, but I think because I didn’t really know what I was expecting and the fact that this was a stop halfway through our trip just made this beautiful place all the more surprising for me.
We woke up early in the morning in North Cascades National Park and spent about 6 hours in the car making our way south of Washington. The highway started off beautiful - rocky mountains, rushing rivers, reflective lakes. It eventually turned into a highway that looks like it was built somewhere in Mars. We had the music blaring and the vlog camera rolling every hour into our road trip through the state.
After a few viewpoint and a couple of food stops, the highway starts becoming more lush. At first we enter and exit small sections of forest along the way. And before you know it, we were immersed in green, crossing a bridge over an amazingly blue lake with a mountain looming over us in the not-so-far distance. Our first official stop in Mt Rainier was one with the daisies. We could see Mt Rainier in the distance and there was a viewpoint covered in white little flowers. We stopped her for a quick picture and to stretch our legs before continuing.
We were delirious and pretty tired by the time we reached our cabin in the woods. We were staying literally minutes from the park entrance, but by the time we arrived it was already getting dark and we had no energy left in us again. Instead, we decided to get to know the area we were staying at a little better with a small walk around the grounds and then and early bed time to be prepared for the following day.
Morning was an easy one. We ordered a blackberry pie which we shared for breakfast with a coffee each. We had this all in the car with the morning light shining on our faces as we drove to the entrance of Mt Rainier National Park. There was lots of roadwork on the way up the mountain, so we vlogged in the car, talking about silly things and making ourselves laugh to wake ourselves up. By the time we got our first glimpse of Mt Rainier up close we started getting excited.
I couldn’t recommend more to get to this National Park as early as possible. We were there from pretty much sunrise and we managed to be able to go for a drive around the park, stopping at a few lookouts and waterfalls for pictures that were completely full of cars and people by the time we were leaving the park in the afternoon. If you get here late there is a high chance that you will miss out on seeing and doing quite a few things!
We set off on our first hike of the day and ended up spending the next 6 hours hiking through the mountains. Our first stop was Myrtle Falls in Paradise, followed by the longest hike of the day to Upper Crystal Lake and back to Longmire where we started off so many hours ago earlier that day. The majority of photos from this blog post where taken of all the amazing sights we saw along the way!
At the end of the day we got back to our car and ended up taking the wrong road home which sent us to a different exit of the park. We turned around and headed back the right way to our cabin where we fell asleep ready to do it all over again tomorrow.
all photos edited with my NEW Washington Lightroom Preset
