We said good-bye to Ocean Shores and our new friends, Marion & Siggy, yesterday and headed west to the Cascades. A beautiful ride through the small, rural, agricultural towns. As we were riding along Hwy 12, for the first time we saw a glimpse of Mount Rainier to the northwest and Mt. St. Helen to the southwest. There was definitely no mistaking St. Helen for Rainier. Absolutely beautiful.
We had our GPS set to find the campground in Randle, but I am always the backup with a paper map in hand. “Betty” messed with us again. She said we had 2 more miles as we passed a campground. I remarked, “That’s a pretty little campground”, then read the sign that said Cascade Peaks and I looked at Tony and said, “Isn’t that the name of the campground we are staying at?” So he finds a place to pull over (not easy pulling a 40 foot 5th wheel) and checks his phone and yes, that was us. So we had to drive a short distance to find a place we could turn around that same monster. But we did see an elk cross the road. Got settled into the campground and then drove around, to the town of Randle and ate supper. Then we drove to Packwood and there were elk in people’s yards, just grazing away.
Today we (me) slept in and then we headed to the Sunrise area of Mt. Rainier. It was clear and we were able to see the mountain. It was absolutely breathtaking.
There were many other people going into the park, even though this was supposed to be the least busy area in the park. There was about a 30 minute wait to check in at the gate, and we had to ride around the parking area at the Lodge and Visitor’s Center several times to get a parking place. There was mentioned in the brochure an easy, 1 mile, flat hike in an alpine meadow that we planned to do. But all I saw was a path going up, up, up the side of a mountain (with flowers) and people climbing the path like mountain goats. So I asked a park ranger if that was the “easy” 1 mile loop. Yes, they said. So I asked if there were a “flatter”, more level one and she told us there was and how to get to it. So, off we go, “wrongway Pucketts”. We started down (down being the key word here) a gravel road and we had beautiful views of Rainier. Tony eventually said, “You know, we do have to come back up as far as we go down”, so we only went about 1/2 mile before turning around. When we got back to the beginning of the “trail”, we cut across the parking lot to get to the truck and guess what we saw? The real trail that she was talking about. No, we didn’t take it then. We headed back down the mountain and stopped to eat in Packwood. There were even more elk in this one yard – about 15, right in the middle of town. And there were elk on the side of the road as we headed back to the campground. We are back and settling in for the night, planning an earlier start to Mt. St. Helen tomorrow.
Just a few more pics on the way back down.
GA Gypsies - Fulltiming 