Mount Rainier - Paradise in the Mist

On Friday, we drove up to Paradise - the main Visitor Information Center on the Nisqually road. The park is very popular in summer when the wild-flowers bloom in the high meadows (about 2 million visitors annually!) but right now the area is covered in hard dirty snow and mist and snowshoes are still rented from the gift shop. One day I hope to visit the Mountain and see the peak. We see it well from Seattle on a clear day but on this and our last visit it has been obscured by cloud.

When we reached the visitor center carpark we were excited to see a fox. Inside, we saw many warnings about feeding the foxes and figured out it was begging from visitors - hoping for a scrap.

After the recent heatwave both kids were excited to see snow but had forgotten how cold it is. It was hard to remember because the air was not cold but the snow itself could freeze your fingers pretty quick if you tried to make snowballs. Here, the kids throw snowballs made by Dad and I and Dad helps Wren descend from the snowbank which was "slippelly!"

"Watch out, its slippery!"

We stopped off at a viewpoint to see a waterfall and hoping to find a Gray Jay. We had seen them at this spot one winter when we came here with Mum and Mervyn. Unfortunately there were no Gray Jays in sight but Wren loved looking down the cliff at the tumbling waterfall. He called it a "water fountain" and as soon as we drove off he started crying to return.

Wren likes 'water fountains'.


I bought a few field guides at the Visitors' Center - a key for tree identification, Plants and Animals of Mount Rainier and the Cascades and a book on Roadside Geology of the park. I am very excited about each of them. As always - I want to know more than I have time for.