Mt. Rainer

 If you noticed my lack of blog post from last week, you may have wondered what caused break in routine. Well, the cause was just that, a break in routine. A couple of weeks ago, Jeremy remembered that he now gets Juneteenth off of work. Since it fell on a Thursday this year, we decided that he should take Friday off, Merrick should play hooky from his sports commitments and we should sneak away. The only problem was figuring out where to go. After considering all the usual favorites, we decided to try somewhere new, Packwood, Washington, a town at the Southern base of Mt. Rainer. 

We headed out Thursday afternoon, after some morning obligations, and arrived in Packwood just in time to grab some pizza for dinner and take an evening walk down to the river. Our house was not right on the river, but did have private river access right around the corner. On our walk, we discovered a beautiful, turquoise Cowlitz  River that was VERY cold. Since the Cowlitz river originates at the Cowlitz Glacier on Rainer, we were very close to the origination point and it definitely felt like Glacier water. The beauty all around us though was truly undeniable.

On Friday, we spent the day at Rainer. We did a little hiking, but mostly stopped and saw all the view points, rivers, and water falls. We also visited the visitors center at Paradise on the mountain. It was really cold at this point and even started to snow. For lunch, we headed to the east side of Rainer. We found a burger spot, went to cute, old time soda and ice cream shop, and bought some Rainer cherries from a roadside stand as is rained off and on. Eventually, we made our way back to our Airbnb. We hunkered in the for night, played some ping-pong and arcade games, and had some cornbread and chili as the rain descended.

Saturday morning, the rain continued. It was supposed to rain throughout the morning so we started the morning with some family games and then decided to check out some shops in town. We visited the local thrift shop and the town mercantile. By this time, the rain had let up and we were able to visit a farmer's market where we picked up some local tamales. With the rain now stopped, we decided to explore the river a little more. Some of us were braver than others with the cold water. Brave that is until we got out and the defrosting set in. We rounded out a great day with a campfire back at our Airbnb complete with roasted hot dogs and s'mores.

Sunday we had to head home, but before we did, we headed back to Rainer for some more hiking and exploring, it was still cloudy so we never got to see all of Rainer in her full glory, but it was clearer on Sunday and we could see just how much snow there was. We took a snowy hike and all of us except Merrick fell on snow. Around 3pm, we started our trek home.

We made it home Sunday evening without incident. It was a magical trip overall. We were able to work around the weather and do and see most everything we wanted, except the full view of Rainer. I guess that means we will just have to go back next summer for that. Oh, darn!