Mt. Rainier and onto Alaska

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From B-E-A-U-tiful Crater Lake we made our way up to Bend, OR and enjoyed the town who's reputation as being a really great city was definitely earned in our short time there. Because of the need for rest, laundry and tending to personal hygiene we, unfortunately, spent much of our time in the motel.

We got to Mt. Rainier NP late on Friday after a long day of state highway driving enoying the variety of Oregon geography, from forest to flat fields to deserts to seeing Mt. Hood and Mt. Adams on the horizon. Arriving at a NP in July late on Friday evening without a campground reservation is stupid at best, particularly with our knowledge of pay camping learned so far. Oddly all the campgrounds we checked were FULL, hmmm, who'd expected that? Luckily the ranger station assistant gave us a tip of a tiny campground up a forest road which we enjoyed all to ourself and for free, we have been blessed time and again on this trip.

We headed into MT. Rainer and just kept getting blown away by it's giant presence that astounded and surprised us at various turns in the road. Wow, it is a mountain (well technically a volcano) that towers over all around it. We enjoyed our short but sweet overnight trip to a trail with various waterfalls and then made our way into Olympia, WA for a relaxing day at Millerslyvania State park with plenty of sleeping and bit of swimming and canoeing. Then into Sea-Tac to catch our flight to ALASKA!

Keeping this short so we can get to Denali, we have arrived and the goal of getting to Alaska for the honeymoon was an elusive but totally realized one, we are here. More blogging later, hopefully free of any frightening bear encounters though some sightings would be pretty nice.

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Photos

Mt. Rainier NP
Nisqually River

Mt. Rainier NP
Narada Falls

Millerslyvania State Park, WA
Deep Blue Lake