Washington State and Mt. Rainier – June 20, 2011

We left our hosts home early Monday morning as we had an 8:00 am appointment with the local Toyota dealer to have the car’s 80K service which just amounts to oil change, tire rotation, and inspection.  It passed inspection better than Rita or I would.  We were away from the Seattle area about 9:30 am which wasn’t far from normal.

We headed south on highway 16 with cloudy skies but no rain.  Crossing Puget Sound once more by bridge we skirted the city of Tacoma, worked our way to Puyallup where we took highway 161 south to highways 7 and 706 towards Mt. Rainier National Park.  Just before the park entrance we stopped for lunch at highly recommended Alexander’s Country Inn, not sure if they were open for lunch.  There was nobody at the front desk and we finally found a man who said, yes they were open for lunch.  Nobody else was there.  Our waitress apologized to us and said that the chef just arrived and she didn’t know if they were going to open for lunch or not.  Despite this shaky start we had an excellent lunch – Rita with a quiche and I had a fresh trout out of their own trout pond.  I even got a discount because our waitress didn’t know how to de-bone a trout and I did most of the work.  We had laughs and a good lunch at bargain prices.

We continued into the park, driving to the Longmire Information Center first where the old park headquarters is a rustic building that went up in the 1920s and is on the National Historic Landmark list.  After looking at that we continued up the road with no views of Mt. Rainier because of clouds.  Last Friday when we arrived in the Seattle area we did see Mt. Rainier in clear conditions but did not photograph it from afar then.  Now I wish we had.  It is usually shrouded in clouds.  We stopped at several overlooks and finally came to Paradise Inn with snow piled up high (see photos).

We continued through the park to highway 123 on the park’s eastern edge where we exited the park heading south into the Gifford Pinchot National Forest.  We took highway 12 west to highway 25 which we had hoped to follow past Mt. Saint Helens but no luck as the road was closed because of snow.  In mid-June!  So we took highway 12 to Interstate 5 instead and headed to Portland which wasn’t far from us.  We stopped to use Wi-Fi at a McDonalds and made last minute reservations at a hotel in downtown Portland.  We called my distant cousin, Lydia Beyoud, and walked to a nearby restaurant for dinner.  We are ready to see Portland Tuesday on the first day of summer.