Days 83 - 84: Mount Ranier National Park, WA

Mount Ranier is the most heavily glaciated peak in the lower 48 states and is the fifth National Park, created in 1899.

They had some interesting books in the museum gift shop.

The park has lots of historic structures and a little museum.

I think this is Charlie the Cougar.  He was taxidermied about 100 years ago.

Mount Ranier had some buses similar to Yellowstone and Glacier but they no longer use them.  There were only five made, and this is one of the last remaining three in existence.

Cool vintage gas station with the pumps still there.

Doesn't look like much in the photo but this waterfall is about 90 feet tall.

The day we arrived, the mountain was completely obscured by low clouds.  This is the visitor's center at "Paradise".  We had no choice but to camp for the night and hope the mountain would show itself tomorrow.  The Park Rangers warned us that Mount Ranier makes its own weather and can remain hidden for weeks!

We camped for the night in a light drizzle and met these two characters, Ian and his father Stan.  They were about halfway thru hiking the "Wonderland Trail," which circles the base of Mount Ranier.  The hike is 95 miles long and takes about a week to complete!  Ian had forgotten his rain pants and they were afraid of him getting damp and not being able to complete the hike.  I loaned him mine and they hiked on the next morning.  We got to spend some time with them, drinking beer and listening to Stan play guitar.  He knows a bunch of classic rock and folk songs like Woodie Guthrie, Eagles, Neil Young, etc.  Good times!  We exchanged information so I could retrieve the pants and Ian is letting us stay at his place in Portland!

The following morning the mountain showed itself for an hour or so and disappeared again!  It's really breathtaking because it's not part of a range.  It just stands alone and dominates the landscape.

"the most luxuriant and the most extravagantly beautiful of all the alpine gardens I ever beheld in all my mountain-top wanderings."

-John Muir

Marmots!

 

We did a sub alpine meadow hike and it was teaming with flowers, deer, marmots, and even some snow still on the ground.

 

This is Park Ranger Casey educating visitors about the Pacific Rim volcanoes, especially the ones along the west coast.  The Ranger programs are great and the Rangers are really passionate about their jobs.

This illustrates how frequently the western US volcanoes have experienced eruptions.  Ranier is not expected to seriously erupt anytime, but it is considered dangerous because of all the glacial ice stored on the mountain.  If there was a landslide, this could create a "lahar" or mudflow that could devestate Tacoma and even Seattle.  There's evidence of one 5000 years ago that reached Puget Sound.  The mountain was believed to have been over 16,000 feet tall before the lahar decreased its height and then the glaciers eroded it even more. 

In the meantime, it's a beauty to behold.  That afternoon, the summit appeared again but the clouds never completely lifted.  Still, we feel lucky we got to see it.  In the foreground is a glacial moraine where the Nisqually Glacier scraped a huge trough.  The toe of the glacier is visible about half way up the moraine.  It's covered in dirt and rock but you can see where the melt water starts, that is actually ice!

Days 81 - 82: Mount St. Helens National Volcanic Monument

After resupplying in Olympia, we headed for Mount St Helens National Volcanic Monument.  Mount St Helens isn't a National Park so there're no campgrounds on the mountain.  There is an "official" campground in the surrounding National Forest but it didn't really offer much, so we elected to save some money and "disperse camp". 

 

Just up a well maintained gravel logging road was a smaller dirt road and just a short way down that road we discovered a previously used little campsite that had a firepit and some wood already gathered by whoever used it last.  Free camping!

After a restful night in the Gifford Pinchot National Forest we woke up to heavy fog.  Luckily, it burned off by mid morning and we were able to get our first glimpse of Mount St. Helens.  What a sight!

 

The destruction wrought by the 1980 eruption is still very visible, even 31 years later.  This small nearby lake survived because it was frozen over at the time of the eruption.  Once it thawed there were fish, mice, and other animals still alive in and around the lake.

This is Spirit Lake, at the base of Mount St. Helens.  Spirit Lake was a different story.  A landslide during the eruption pushed the water 800 feet up the opposite shore and washed all the trees that the blast had knocked down back into the lake .

31 years later, about a third of the trees still float on the surface.  Apparently Douglas Firs float the longest.  Not only that, but the lake level is 200 feet higher than it was before.  Right after the disaster the lake grew and threatened to flood downstream communities.  Steps had to be taken to safely drain some water from it since the old outlet had been buried.

 

The surrounding hills that took the brunt of the blast and lie within the National Monument  have been left alone to illustrate how forests heal from such disasters.

 

It's slowly coming back.

 

Hard to see but this plaque illustrates what happened during the eruption.  A mild earthquake set off a landslide, then the eruption blew about 1000 feet of rock off the top of the mountain, and then the ash cloud rose into the atmosphere.  This all took about 10 seconds.  57 people died.  We met a gentleman whose cousin was logging in the area that day and,tragically, was never found.

There's a lookout near the volcano that provided a great view if you're willing to climb a few steps.

The mountain is already rebuilding itself.  There's a lava dome growing in the crater.  Remarkably, there's also a glacier growing in the crater!

Days 79 - 80: Olympic National Park, WA

Olympic National Park on the Olympic Peninsula has quite a variety of things to offer, from rain forest to mountains, but Angie is a beach girl so we spent most of our time at the many beaches.

The beaches themselves are each pretty unique.  The first one we visited, Mora Beach, had smooth pebbles rather than sand and the surf was so violent it would have been crazy to swim.  Meanwhile, at nearby LaPush, the beach is typical sand and the waves much calmer so we were able to swim a little.

We camped the first night at the Kalaloch Campground and only by luck and some sluething by Angie were able to get the last available campsite.  Angie noticed an unoccupied campsite with a "reserved" notice and tracked down the camper in charge to ask if we could have it.  Turns out, a large group had reserved a bunch of sites and didn't use one of them.  Go Angie!

This is the nearby beach at low tide and sunset.

Just down the coast a few miles: we camped the next day at a great campground called South Beach.  This is where we spent September 11th.  The campsites are on a bluff overlooking a long sandy beach.  We probably would have stayed another day but the campground closed the next day for the winter.

 

Angie in her element getting some sun while Kipper stays cool under his umbrella.

 

Our little shanti by the sea.

Another beautiful Pacific sunset.

 

Don't be fooled by all the sunshine.... it was misty and cloudy about half the time.  We just didn't take as many photos!

 

Once we'd had enough beach and were almost out of provisions we headed to Olympia, WA to resupply and go to REI to exchange our hiking boots that were giving us some issues.  The new shoes are working out great.  That night, we camped at a great little place outside Olympia, WA.

Angie's excited because we just came from Trader Joe's for the first time.

Taco dinner!