It was quite a long day at Mount Rainier, which I hadn't been to in 12 years. It started with a bad omen near where we live. Someone drove a car off the highway and into a ravine. It was all blocked off so we couldn't see anything, only the ominous missing rail where the car had gone through.
Next I missed a sign that Paradise is now requiring reservations between 9-3 because it is too busy to handle standard crowds now. What made it worse is we'd left early to beat the crowds. The park ranger I talked with said we could go somewhere else in the park or wait until 3 to enter. We decided on going down to Packwood against my better judgment, as I was upset with the ranger and just wanted to leave.
My wife kept a cool head through it all. She found a trail for us to explore in Packwood- the kid's first hike. The most surreal moment of the day was finding all these wooden snowmen that someone had dressed with clothes. At first it was pretty creepy. The way this day was developing reminded me of how a lot of horror movies started, with a group falling on hard times, being out in the middle of nowhere, and stumbling on someone's messed up idea of hospitality.
We made it back to the car safely, deciding to return to the Paradise road to wait another hour for it to open. Meanwhile the road was getting busier with idlers waiting to get in, so we knew it was going to be busy. But I was not prepared for how busy it ended up being. Paradise was a zoo- never go there on weekends.
The drive up was incredible for the whole family. As we got closer to our mecca of mountains, the oohs and aahs increased in intensity. This relieved me because they'd been scared of the heights coming into the park. Redeemed by Rainier, phew.
Things got difficult again when parking was hard to find and I was getting dehydrated. Going to the bathroom took half an hour. Before we knew it it was 4 o'clock and the crowd seemed to be getting bigger. The main trail of the mountain made me nauseous and my youngest quickly tired. We took a side trail that was the highlight of the day. All of a sudden we were alone in a homely field of wildflowers underneath the mountain. My wife said she felt like she was in heaven.
It was their first National Park and the highest they've ever been (5,400 feet). All of them.
Interestingly, a bag of chips we brought was all puffed up at this elevation. I was worried it would pop if opened too quickly. My wife made a minor incision that released the pressure, no pun intended.
The way back was equally eventful. We stopped in a town called Elbe that had model trains for buildings and a large Trump sign. We drove through Eatonville, another small town where my stepfather and his family live. Just north of there I saw a horse and carriage walking up the highway, I kid you not. Then my wife got confused when the freeway ended in Puyallup, a genuine fork in the road when I wasn't paying attention. She took the wrong fork of course, taking her right where another freeway ended which was a downright clusterfuck. I spent 10 minutes trying to figure out what happened when my oldest son had been right all along. The first thing he said after she went the wrong way was that the freeway ended. I swear that kid is one step ahead of me sometimes. Maybe two.
To cap it off, right near our home there was a fire burning a bush close to the Bartell store, where people were wisely calling the fire department. We heard the sirens as soon as we got home. Fingers cross that the fire did not spread.
Wow, what a day. It's like a whole week's trip crammed into one day. Since we can't afford one this year, maybe that is the universe's way of compensating. But Lord am I exhausted, good night.
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