A Nice Leisurely Hike...Or Not!

Last Saturday, I convinced Kevin to go on a hike with us up in Mt. Rainier National Park. You know-I played the poor helpless female who needed a big, strong man to protect her and her kidlets from the hidden dangers that lurk in the woods...lol!!!

Honestly though, I needed another adult to go with us, as you cannot take dogs on any of the trails up there. It was decided that we would hike the Glacier Basin Trail, and boy did we have a great time.

The hike was supposed to be about seven miles round trip, but flooding from two years ago (see above link) added quite a bit of extra terrain/mileage to cover. A large part of the main trail was washed out, and we spent a good amount of our hike traversing through river rocks, log jams, and small streams. It was fun though...See???If you look near Katie in the picture below, you can see the flags that the ranger's have placed along the detour to keep us crazy hikers on the right rocks...er...path. This was the last rock/mudslide that we had to cross, and from it, we entered bear country. We even saw quite a few piles of bear poo.

See Kevin??? I told you we needed you...lol!!!

During the hike, there are several spots where Mt. Rainier peaks out at you in all of its glory. It was truly breathtaking, and the pictures do not really show you just how close we were to it.In person, it looked like it was close enough to reach out and touch...Ever seen nature's air conditioner??? It was really warm that day-about 78 in the park and 95 back at home-but when you got within 10 feet of this little waterfall, the air temperature dropped by like 10-15 degrees. Nice!!!! Needless to say, we spent some time-both ways-cooling off here.After we had gone about 3.5 miles-or more-we asked people who were coming back down how much longer we had until we hit the glacier. Unfortunately, they all said at least another two miles, and we had to turn around (Kevin has not exercised in years and he was about ready to die at this point. I am really proud that he bit the bullet and made it as far as he did though).They are making a new trail that is about 40-50 feet above the old one, and once it is done-and the hike is once again seven miles long-we will do it again.

One more thing....This trail is one of the gateways to climb the mountain, and on our way up-and down-we passed several climbers who were returning from the summit. How cool is that??? They were kind of smelly though...lol!!!

We made it back to our truck, and headed up the road to an area known as Sunrise, but I will write about that in another post. Have a great day you guys!