“Living the Dream” – Day 10 of our 1/2 world trip aka Year 2, Day 153, Tuesday, September 27, 2022. I would say the Seattle area is not our favorite place. The traffic is so heavy and restaurant prices are very high. The only saving grace is the people. They are so friendly and nice. Also, the food in the restaurants is very good. The weather is also very nice. It is cool in the mornings and gets warm and sunny in the afternoons. No humidity. The air is crisp and fresh. Today is Mt. Ranier day. We passed a lot of landfills and dump trucks pulling dump truck beds on the drive to the National Park. Never saw them before. I wonder if they are illegal in other states. Finally after about twenty miles of traffic and city suburbia stuff, I could breath. 161 south turned into a gorgeous pine tree lined road. I am not a city girl. Even though I lived most of my life in New Jersey. It was in beautiful Sussex County. Mt Ranier is a large active stratovolcano in the Cascade Range of the Pacific Northwest, located in Mount Rainier National Park about 59 miles south-southeast of Seattle. Mount Ranier has the largest alpine glacial system outside of Alaska and the world’s largest volcanic glacier cave system Mt Ranier stands 14,410 feet above sea level.
Stratovolcanoes, also known as composite cones, are the most picturesque and the most deadly of the volcano types. Their lower slopes are gentle, but they rise steeply near the summit to produce an overall morphology that is concave in an upward direction. They typically form at convergent plate margins. The fire danger is listed as very high today. Mt Ranier was established as the 5th National Patk in the US on March 2, 1899 and is 235,625 acres in size. It is roughly 20×20 miles.
The closer we got to the National Park the taller the pine trees got. They lined the road so majestically, tall and straight like guards to a palace retreat. What a beautiful area. It is breathtaking. We entered the park in Ashford at the Nisqually entrance. The park ranger was from Pulasky County, KY and had lived for a short time in Science Hill. What a small country it is. We have heard that in the summer and weekends you can wait hours on line to get in the park. It is very quiet here today. We drove about a mile and made a left onto Westside road. This road is only opened seasonslly. The trees were humongous and amazing. We stopped on this road just to check out a tree and view the Glen below. So far this is the best part of our trip. There are lots of ferns growing among the trees here. You can view water racing down the Tacoma Creek at some points on on the right. The water rushing sounds beautiful. I freaking love it here. On the left side of the road there are some huge straight up clifts. The vegetation along the road is covered with dust. Reminds us of Neilson Road in Wantage, NJ where we used to live. We only saw one car the whole way and it was speeding down the road. We meandered slowly down the road enjoying the sights and sounds for about three miles and then the road dead ended at a gate. To go any further you had to bike or hike. We turned around and headed back to the main park road. The whole drive, Steve kept saying there are some big trees here. He was truly impressed by their size. We drove about another three miles and stopped at Kautz Creek. All along the road there are spots to pull over, park, enjoy the ravine views, and take those gorgeous pictures. At Kautz Creek we parked and crossed the street to the viewpoint. There is a walkway to an area where you get your first great view of the glaciers on top of the mountain. Wow it is breathtaking. I can’t use that word enough here. The walkway is built of plastic boards and is very slippery. There are dumpsters with reminders you are in bear country. We got back on the road and headed to Longmire. I look at the trees and I see beauty. Steve looks at the trees and sees lumber. He wonders how many 2×4’s you can get out of one. At Logmire there is a little museum. The piece of Douglas-fir tree cut and displayed at the entrance to the museum is about six feet wide. It began to grow in 1293 and was cut in 1963. Oh, the things that this tree has seen in 670 years. Western hemlock, western red cedar, and Douglas fir are the most common trees found in Mount Rainier’s old-growth lowland forests. Some of these large trees are as old as 1,000 years, interspersed with others of different ages. We didn’t see any really large trees today. In eastern California, a Great Basin bristlecone pine known as Methuselah has long been considered Earth’s oldest living thing. According to tree-ring data, it is 4,853 years old. So of course that led Steve and I to the discussion about how do you count the rings of a live tree. That is something to think about. Well, you can extract an increment core from the tree using an increment borer. I would like to see that tree one day. We then drove up to Christine Falls. Walked down the viewpoint trail. It was very steep. Took pictures of the falls with the bridge over it. Then onward and crossed the Nisqually river. Wow higher and higher we went. Yikes it was actually scary in the car. We turned off on Ricksecker Point Loop Drive on the right labeled as the viewpoint. There are 26 glaciers here in Mt Ranier. You can get tremendous pictures and views off of this road. There are many places to stop. At some view points it feels as though you can reach out and touch the mountains. If I heard once I heard fifty times or more from Steve. “STAY AWAY FROM THE EDGE”. After this one way drive we proceeded further to Narada Fall. The trail to view the falls from the bottom was heart pounding. At Narada Falls you are about 15 miles into the park. This waterfall is 168 feet high. After this stop we proceeded up hill to Glacier Vista Viewpoint. The roads are like KY roads by us. No guardrails with steep sides. We certainly burned off those cruising calories today. Then onto Paradise, which is the closest we got to the Nisqually glacier at 5,400 feet. On the way down we saw a beaver sitting at the side of the road. We only saw two animals the whole day. Two alive and one dead. The other live one was a big fat chipmunk. I am really surprised we didn’t see anything else. We didn’t see any insects either. I could have spent days in this park. Steve not so much. I am so sorry about the picture overload.
Today’s product recommendations are traveling essentials. 1) Luggage hand cart – we love this cart for easy rolling for easy cruise carry-on bags. Even when you can’t go to your room right away this is so easy to walk around the ship with. Here’s the link https://amzn.to/3s37EOw
2) This large toiletry bag is the best. Steve has the black and I have the pink. We both absolutely love them. Here’s the link https://amzn.to/3v1p6ok and picture
