Mt Rainier National Park

 

Of course, the Mountain was partially hidden by clouds!  If that is all we faced today...well...

The RV Park is about an hour's drive from the entrance to Mt. Rainier National Park.  A fairly scenic view, with Alder Lake taking up a bit of it.  

I sensed something was up when the GPS had a mile long RED zone, which means there is slow, very slow, moving traffic...but it did not say why.  Four miles away from the entrance I see this sign that essentially says, "If there is a back-log of cars to here, you have a four hour wait to get into the National Park.  A couple minutes later there is one for 3 miles out...3 hour wait.  I told Marcia I thought we were going to have a problem.  Sure enough, just before the 1 mile out there is a back-up of cars...a ONE HOUR WAIT to get into the park.  What is up with that????

Just before we got to the entrance, we stopped for some fresh cherries...they were good, but not worth an hour wait.  I figured our "waiting" our turn to get into the park took longer than the drive to get to ONE MILE OUT from the park entrance.  

 Well, we got a few picture today, but finding places to pull over to get pictures was hit and miss...with lots of misses.  Very busy park...

The traffic once in the park moved pretty well...but there so many areas where the parking was just impossible...but plenty of parking in the lesser scenic, non-hiking trail areas.

 At top of the Paradise area, it was a MASS of people...some of whom hiked up this trail to Hell...I mean...a possible better view of the mountain and surrounding mountains.  Well, my 70 years old legs, bad knees and all, started hurting just watching them go up and come down.  After taking in the view, and yes, we lucked out with a ADA parking spot close to the Visitor's Center, we headed back down.

 

Surprised to find out that Mt Rainier is taller than Mt. Shasta in Northern California.  However, while Rainier is taller, Shasta actually has a larger base diameter and greater total volume. It has been around 1,000 years since its last eruption.  There are 28 named glaciers on Mt. Rainier, along with other unnamed snowfields.  

"IF" it erupted now, it would take out a large chunk of the communities south of, and perhaps including, Tacoma. 

Found out that the Sunrise area on the other side of the mountain is not open yet...but we can get part way up there, and that is our plan before we head east towards Glacier National Park. 
 

 

Rainier View Adult Rv Park

 

Our first view of Mt Rainer today as we drove from 7 Cedars Casino over to Graham WA where our next RV Park was located.  We were lucky...but not at the Casino.  Today we got the last RV spot at Rainier View Adult Rv Park.  $60 a night (we will be here 2 nights) is a deal from the prices I have seen from other parks.  My original plan was to stay at Cougar Rock campground in the National Park.  It is first come park until July, then they reserve over half of the sites.  The issue is, no Internet.  No cell phone.  No TV.  Not our way of RVing...we need Internet at night, which will provide TV, and Cell reception at night so we check on things as needed.  So I started to look for places, and found this one.  Of course, with the "Adult" word being part of the parks name, I had to be sure they did not mean ADULT as in ADULT MOVIES...LOL

And there is the view right out the backside of our camper van!  It is much larger in person, the picture makes it look so small...

 

Here is the view at sunset.  I was hoping that it would pink up more than it did, but it was still nice.

Our plan is to go up to the South Side of the park tomorrow in what is called the Paradise area. At the end of the day, we will return to the RV Park.  Sunday we will leave the RV Park for good, and go up the north side, called the Sunrise area.  From there we will start headed east to Glacier National Park.

The day is done.  Tomorrow will be a busy day.