We were up early on our second day in Seattle due to the 3 hour time difference so we picked our rental car up at 7.15am and headed out to Mount Rainier. After a couple of hours driving we arrived at the park border and headed for Paradise. It was still pretty quiet when we arrived so we found a map in the visitor centre and decided to head out on one of the easy trails to a waterfall.
Here we are looking fresh at the start of our walk...
It was supposed to take about 40 minutes but 20 minutes later even after a million stops for photos we were already there!
So we thought we'd walk on just a little further. Paradise is known for its beautiful meadows of wildflowers. I think they were probably past their best but they still looked pretty good.
We were so excited when we saw a bit of snow and the further we walked, the more snow we saw. Soon it was covering some of the paths.
Chris was determined to get to a certain point on the map but we didn't really plan on walking very far and weren't sure how long it was going to take us or what the terrain was going to be like. We ended up getting to the stage that it was probably going to be quicker to continue walking in the loop rather than heading back but we had no idea what to expect on the way. The views were definitely worth it as we continued...
But we had to trek across a lot of snow fields!
This last one was a killer, it was really hard to climb and we kept on slipping back down again. At one point I was virtually crawling up on all fours!
Finally after over 2 hours and 6400ft we made it to the top of the trail, looking a little hotter and sunburnt than when we set off!
From there it was a much easier downhill journey back to the visitor centre where we had a well deserved lunch. After eating we continued driving through the park on to Sunrise where there were some great views of the mountain from the other side.
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