Stop 30: Randle, WA (Mt. Rainier National Park, Mt. St. Helens

Our trip from Port Ludlow took us down the East side of the Olympic Peninsula, across the Tacoma Narrows Bridge and east to Randle. Randle is just South of Mt. Rainier and just North of Mt. St. Helens.

We feel relatively isolated here. The park doesn't have cable and there's no trace of an on-air signal in any direction. The only wi-fi is at a hotspot down at the office. There's no signal for my phone (strangely, Kristen's little Boost phone, which hardly ever works when we're on the road, works great). We've scanned the entire radio dial and found only 2 stations, neither of which are worth listening to. I knew that there was a reason that we brought DVDs and the IPod.

Our First Full day: Mt. St. Helens

We called up the Mt. St. Helens Visitor Center on our GPS and the route was 109 miles each way. The route went West almost to I-5, then South for a bit and then way back to the East. The map didn't show a better route to the Visitor Center. We both seemed to remember that Mt. St. Helens blew out on its East side. On the map, we could see that Spirit Lake was clearly East of the volcano. It made no sense to us to drive a long way only to approach from the wrong side.

Coming through Randle, we'd noticed a turnoff for Mt. St. Helens. On the map, that route was more like 30 miles and it approached from the East. That was much more like it so that's the route that we took.

The road was one of the roughest that we've seen in a long time. I don't know if it was tree roots or freeze-thaw or erosion or earthquakes but the entire road was pretty much shot. Our big disappointment was that the road that would have taken us to Spirit Lake and to the Windy Ridge View Point was still closed because of snow. We did make it to another view point that was at the Eastern end of the blast area.

Mt. St. Helens in cloud (unfortunately). In 1980, everything between here and there was knocked flat and covered in ash.

Same angle with less zoom.

Later in the day, we went to Packwood for groceries. Since our next day objective was Mt. Rainier and there was no guarantee that it wouldn't turn cloudy, I took this shot from the market parking lot.

We had some excitement when we returned to the trailer. The sensors indicated that it was time to dump the black and grey tanks. Black always goes first, since draining the grey cleans out the sewer pipe. I started to drain the black and noticed immediately that our sewage was coming up out of the sewer connections in the 3 adjacent sites. I shut it off immediately and got the parks owners down for a look. We ended up having to pack up and move to a different site (and got a bit of a refund for the inconvenience).

Our second full day: Mt Rainier National Park

Mount Rainier was a very pleasant surprise - it was just beautiful. Our first stop in the park was at he Grove of the Patriarchs Trail. This 1 mile loop took us through an old growth forest of Douglas Fir, Red Cedar and Hemlock.

The path in followed this stream.

Beautiful path (and we aren't even to the old growth part yet).

That's me.

Trees are getting larger.

Kristen and some monster Douglas Firs.

Met a friend along the way.

More huge Douglas Firs.

Pretty big tree!

Kristen wanted proof that she crossed the swinging bridge this time. We had to cross this going to and coming from the old growth forest.

Then we moved on toward the Paradise Visitor Center which is about as close as you can drive to Mt. Rainier. As we approached the Visitor Center, it became obvious that we were either moving into the cloud layer or else the clouds were getting thicker. There was no view of Mt. Rainier from the Visitor Center but we did get some interesting peeks at the peak (clever, huh?) on our way up.

Mt. Rainier from one of the turnouts.

The Tatoosh Range (South of Rainier).

One of many, many waterfalls.

More Tatoosh Range.

Still more Tatoosh Range.

And more.

Another waterfall.

And another.

One of the Reflection Lakes. When not frozen and when the clouds aren't covering Mt. Rainier, I suspect that that is what they reflect.

We waited a bit at the Reflection Lakes and Mt. Rainier did put in an appearance.

Mt. Rainier over Reflection Lake.

Tatoosh Range.

Mt Rainier from another turnout.

We couldn't let the viewless visit to the Visitor Center go to waste. We had a nice lunch at the Paradise Inn (adjacent to the Visitor Center.

Tomorrow, we're off to Woodburn, OR.

-JC-

Stop 29: Port Ludlow, WA (Olympic National Park, Seattle)

Concrete to Port Ludlow would have been a 200 mile trip if we had stuck to the roads. We decided that it would be fun to take the ferry from Coupeville to Port Townsend and knock more than a hundred miles off the trip

Waiting for the ferry to arrive.

Baby goes to sea.

View from the "sun deck".

The "sun deck".

Our wake.

Arriving in Port Ludlow, we were again amazed at how green and lush this area is. We are far from alone in this RV park but you'd never know it. We can't see any of our neighbors.

Our lush site.

More of our lush site.

Our first full day: Olympic National Park

Olympic National Park gets more than 12' of rain each year so I expect that our experience was far from unusual. There were patches of blue sky and sunshine outside the park entrance in Port Angeles. After talking to them at the Visitor Center, we decided to take the 45 minute drive up to the Hurricane Ridge Visitor Center. At the 5242' level, it's supposed to have the best view of the Olympic Range that you can get anywhere (by road).

On the way up we drove up through the drizzle and into the clouds. It was close to zero visibility for long stretches and the drive took much longer than 45 minutes. We finally broke through the top of the clouds but we were still surrounded by clouds.

We saw this pair of deer near the top.

The Visitor Center had this nice graphic under the window to explain what we were looking at.

This is what we were looking at.

Kristen on the way back to the truck.

We did see this lady on the way back down the mountain.

Our second full day: Downtown Seattle

We woke up to rain (not that it ever really stopped). Our plan for days 2 and 3 was to to take the ferry across from Bainbridge Island to Seattle. The iffy part was that we didn't know if parking would be available at the Bainbridge Island Terminal. We could see on the Internet that there's a parking lot but we were worried that the commuters might get there ahead of us and grab all of the spaces. As it ended up, the lot was only about half full.

Out on the Sound, it was pouring and my photos were blurry and unusable (and, if I call them unusable, they must really be unusable). Approaching Seattle, the rain let up and I managed to get this dark image of the skyline.

Approaching the dock, we passed this ferry headed back to Bainbridge Island.

The rain was no where to be seen when we reached Seattle. We had decided in advance that we wanted to have dinner for lunch at one of the wonderful seafood restaurants along the waterfront. It was too early for lunch when we arrived but we walked the waterfront and checked out the menus before we climbed the hill to Pikes Place Public Market.

The famous sign.

Inside the market. I would have loved to catch a picture of the guys flinging fish. They threw a lot of them today but I never had the camera ready.

Ferry boat through the Ferris wheel from Pikes Place

Also from Pikes Place, these are the Mariners and Seahawks stadiums (the Mariner's Safeco Field is the one on the right). Notice that the sky is clearing.

As we were having a wonderful lunch, the sun came out. It was a beautiful thing to see after days of rain. We did a lot more walking and finally headed back to the ferry.

The Space Needle (in the sunshine) from the ferry.

The skyline.

Those stadiums again.

It was sunny all the way across but, as we reached Bainbridge Island, the sky opened up and poured. Fortunately, it stopped by the time that we got back to our trailer and we finished our drive in steamy sunshine.

Third full day: another ferry trip to Seattle

The subheading says it all. Once again, we drove to the Bainbridge Ferry Terminal. We came so close to catching our target ferry that we probably could have jumped across the gap if the barriers weren't in the way. As it was, we missed it and had to wait 65 minutes for the next ferry. On the positive side, we had an easy time finding a parking place. That next ferry arrived at Seattle at noon and a Mariners vs Padres game was starting at Safeco at 12:30 pm. The ferry was packed with Mariners fans and many were complaining about the difficulties that they had encountered finding parking.

The weather today was a bit more cooperative. We didn't see a drop of rain but we didn't see any sunshine either. There was even a ghost of an outline of the Olympic Mountains in the West.

Our first stop was another favorite seafood restaurant along the waterfront. Afterwords, we walked up to Westlake Center and caught the Monorail over to the Space Needle.

Space Needle through the skylights in the Monorail.

Our Monorail sitting in the Seattle Center (Space Needle) Station.

Looking up at the Space Needle.

We had planned to go up in the Space Needle but we had forgotten that it would cost nearly $50 for the 2 of us. Since it's only been a few years since we last went to the top, we decided to skip it. After exploring Seattle Center, we caught the Monorail back to Westlake Center.

Day 2's visit to Pike Place Public Market was a bit of a bust. It was so crowded that we could barely move, let alone see anything. We headed back that direction and found that the crowds were greatly diminished.

This is the famous fish market where they throw large fish long distances to each other. They rarely miss but you don't want to be standing behind the person catching the fish (there's a lot of splatter). That big one hanging out at the bottom is a lung fish. They can manipulate it from under the counter and occasionally make it lunge at an unsuspecting tourist.

This is the shellfish side of the same fish counter.

After some more walking, we made our way back to the Ferry and headed back to the trailer.

Tomorrow, we are off to Ashford, WA.

-JC-