My 2016 Washington Photos

At the tail end of our trip through Oregon, we drove from the coast up to Mount Rainier National Park on our way back home.  We were only there for part of a day, but hiking most of the Skyline Trail in the Paradise area of the park exposed us to some awesome scenery.  Since after our long trip the kids were a little burnt out (literally, after spending most of the previous day at the beach), we didn't do the full loop, but still got to see some of the best trail hike scenery around.  There were lots of wildflowers, and the kids had fun watching a big marmot saunter around eating grass.  It was also fun watching the steady stream of hikers huffing and puffing their way up the mountain with heavy packs on their way up towards Camp Muir for their eventual summit attempts, although I was admittedly a little envious.  One of the rangers I stopped to talk to said that the overall drier-than-usual conditions the last few years had contributed to there not being as much snow as usual, but I was still impressed by all of the glaciers on Mount Rainier (at one point I was able to hear loud cracking noises in the distance, likely emanating from a crevasse where there was ice movement somewhere up on the mountain).