Magnificent Mount Rainier

We spent one full day exploring Asher's new favorite place, Mount Rainier. We had been admiring the mountain, visible from Seattle and Tacoma earlier in the week. After one full day, we barely scratched the surface. One really needs a minimum of three days to see the different areas of this national park in Washington state.

We chose the Paradise section as our destination for it's trails, however upon arrival we found out that most of the trails were closed for maintenance. Argh! The sky view trail was open, so we hiked that one and it had beautiful views.

Using Daddy's monocular to get a closer look.

You can just barely see the snow-covered peak just above the trail.

 Daddy and the kids on top of the waterfall. 

The peak is behind those clouds....

A foreign couple found this mama grasshopper carrying her baby on her back and saved them from being stepped on. I had to laugh when I walked over and realized, it's actually a mating couple. 

The kids participated in a ranger program which taught them how to identify animal tracks. Afterwards we went to a special area to find tracks and identify them. After this they completed their Jr Ranger books and received another badge.

We were lucky to get this view. During the park's video, we found out that the peak is often hidden behind thick cloud cover, so some visitors never get to see it's magnificence up close. Some of the glaciers are visible here.

This is Mirror Lake. This place is probably amazing early morning when the water is perfectly still and reflecting the mountain.

The park's Wonderland Trail circles the mountain with a 93 mile trail that takes 

about two weeks to complete. Maybe someday we will return to hike at least a portion of it. 

There are a couple wooden suspension bridges. We were looking for the 

pedestrian bridge, but found this one instead. It's a one lane bridge.

The 1937 Kenworth Touring Motorcoach that was used to transport visitors to the park from Seattle between 1937 and 1962. The top of the coach a cloth material secured by snaps that allows the top to be removed. The trip is very long today, I can't imagine how long it took in the 30s. 

Just outside the park are a few interesting sites. The first is this church, one of the smallest in the world, measuring 18ft x 24ft. It was built in 1906, seats 46 people and is still open for weekly services.

Another interesting place is the Hobo Inn. One of the largest collections of train cabooses turned into unique roadside lodging. Each caboose has all the comforts of a hotel, one even includes a jacuzzi tub. This would be a fun place to stay while exploring the mountain for a few days.

This area where the trees have been cut down, made for an interesting view. 

It's been more than a month since we were here, and just this week Asher named his robotic fish, Mt Rainier. That gives you an idea of the impression this mountain left on him. He speaks of it often.

Discovering the Nisqually National Wildlife Refuge, Washington

We were happy to find this refuge near our campground. While walking along the trails we saw large blue dragonflies, a turtle, a snake, a heron, and a million bullfrogs! Ok, that was an exaggeration, but we did see a crazy number of them and some were enormous! We learned that the bullfrogs are an invasive species. The tree frog, which we didn't see is indigenous.

Watching the blue heron. 

The water had a thick layer of pretty, green algae, and look at all these lily pads!

More frogs. See two on the branch?

Checking out the Raven. 

Asher found a tiny caterpillar. 

We took advantage of the scenery to grab a few family pictures. 

And one "normal" photo. 

Seattle, Washington

We stayed at Ft Lewis near Tacoma for five days. The campground is right on a lake.  We spent one day kayaking around, but didn't take a camera. We stopped at the beach area to swim and the playground for the kids to play before kayaking back. Asher is becoming a good paddler. Blackberry bushes right at our campsite made for a fun morning ritual of gathering fruit.

We spent one day in Seattle. First we went to the Pacific Science Center that sits just below the Space Needle. 

The reviews were a bit mixed, but I found it to be a fantastic center. They have so much to explore- dinosaurs, health exhibits, live animals and even a touchable tide pool featuring creatures from the nearby Puget Sound.

These naked mole rats were fun to watch run thru their habitat.

We always enjoy butterfly houses. This one gave out identification sheets, so the kids had fun identifying the ones they saw.

This exhibit really kept the kids attention for a long time. This teaches them about nutrition by having them build a full day of meals. They pick items from the conveyer belt, place them on the scanner then drag the item on screen to the plate. They could see the nutritional value of each item and as a meal. It was a fun activity.

This one was just funny to watch. They had to jump to pressurize this machine. 

Afterwards, pushing a button would shoot a ball into the air.

They're favorite activity was building their own rocket and then getting to shoot it off outside!

Afterwards we went to Seattle's famous Pike Place Market to walk around. Asher loved the fish smell, ha!

My aunt and cousin are big time into letter boxing. It's like geocaching, but instead of using GPS coordinates, you find the box using clues and instead of taking/leaving a chotchkie, you use rubber stamps. We've been talking about it for a long time, and decided the kids were finally ready. Normally you'd carve your own original stamp, but we took the easy route and picked some out at Hobby Lobby. 

This was our very first find!

Asher was pretty excited!

Once you find it, you press their stamp in your notebook (we use index cards) then sign in 

with your stamp to their logbook. Last replace the letterbox and mark it found on Atlas Quest. 

On our very last night, we were driving back to our site and noticed the alpenglow on Mt Rainier! Wow! This quick photo from the highway doesn't do it justice. The glow was magnificent! 

*I'm posting this about a month after our visit and Asher still 

talks about Rainier on nearly a daily basis. It's his favorite mountain now.