Mount Rainier National Park

All the planning that I did, I still can’t plan on Mother Nature. Mount Rainier National Park is beautiful. I drove to Paradise from my campsite in Kent, WA. It took almost 2 hours to get there. Once I entered the park the road rose up the mountain winding back and forth. There are several overlooks to stop at where if the weather cooperates you can get beautiful views of Mt. Rainier. At each stop I got to see partial views of the mountain. It wasn’t solid clouds like Mt. Hood but some on the mountain was always covered. The lodge at Paradise is nice. There is a restaurant, but it looked expensive, so I didn’t eat there. On my way back down the mountain I stopped at a couple of the viewpoints. At one of the stops it looked like the clouds were going to move out and give me a view of Rainier. I must have waited about 45 minutes for the clouds to move out but all that happened was that more clouds moved in. While I was waiting for the clouds three deer came up the hill, crossed the road and started to climb the hill on the other side of the road. It wasn’t what I waited for, but I was willing to accept Mother Nature’s substitution. From there I went on down the road to Narada Falls and got some images of the falls and Narada Bridge. I actually had to walk down packed snow to get some images of the lower falls. Going down was actually harder than coming back up. I had hiking boots on, but the packed snow was slippery, and I did a lot of slipping and sliding.