Day five started out lazy and relaxed with a couple of cups of coffee brought to me in the room...yeah, that's the way it should be :)! After coffee and having a little breakfast in the room, we headed over to the Paradise Visitor Center to see if we could talk to a ranger that could give us any hope of Mount Rainier coming out of the clouds during our visit. Of course, we were told that they had no idea, but that She hadn't shown herself all weekend. Okay, not a lot of hope. Next, we packed up our gear for the day and headed east over to Box Canyon and to the Grove of the Patriarchs to do a little hiking. It was a beautiful drive with the mountains of Stevens Ridge on one side and the Tatoosh Range on the other. After stopping at Inspiration Point which was covered in snow, we came upon this cool rock tunnel (below) right before entering Stevens Ridge.
Stevens Ridge
Unicorn Peak and the Tatoosh Range
Our next stop is arguably one of the most photographed places in all of Mount Rainier National Park, Reflection Lake, where you usually see Mount Rainier and its' reflection in the lake along with beautiful wildflowers in the foreground. Well, not today! As you can see below, Reflection Lake was still frozen over and Mount Rainier was covered in clouds. Ah well, I took a photo anyway...the soft blue ice covering the lake was pretty and the sun was shining on the snow beyond. It was a slick climb up to this viewpoint too!
This beautiful little bird came and hung out with us for awhile on this stop. She was quite the ham.
Our next stop was at Box Canyon of the Cowlitz. I just love the name.
When we got to the overlook, someone was telling us to go north.
A very colorful Stellar Jay in the parking lot.
Grove of the Patriarchs Nature Trail. This was a very cool hike through a forest of old growth trees, some of which are a thousand years old, onto an island in the middle of the Ohanapecosh River.
This is where the infamous "lens cap video incident" took place...one of the funnier moments on this trip! This is the rope bridge that takes you over the Ohanapecosh River onto the island and the Lens Cap Video is below that.
Haha, anyway here is the video retake with the lens cap off.
After the Grove of the Patriarchs, we hiked up the road a ways to Silver Falls.
We arrived back at the hotel around 5 PM. We poured some wine and took our laptops out into the lobby to relax and look over our photos from the day. The atmosphere in the lobby was wonderful, which I find to be the case in a lot of National Park Lodges. They had the fireplaces going at both ends and there was a piano player that was playing some music. We sat at one of the window tables that had big glass windows...just in case Mount Rainier had a change of heart. A couple of hours later, we headed back to our room to drop off our cameras and laptops, then we headed to the dining room. About halfway through our meal, we noticed that the sun was peaking out of the clouds outside. There were still a lot of clouds hovering, but it started to look a bit more promising. Okay, we better get our bill just in case we have to make a run for it.
The photo below is the roof of the Paradise Lodge lobby.
Just as we were finishing up in the dining room around 8 PM, the sun made it's appearance known. We looked outside and.the clouds were lifting fast....we were beginning to see the outline of a mountain...a big mountain! We left the dining room and ran down the two corridors to our room...grabbed our cameras and flew out the backdoor of the hotel. We scrambled up a large snowbank, laughing and sinking up to our knees at times as we went. When we finally reached the top of that snowbank and turned around, well, let me just say that this was the best moment of the whole the trip for me.
Not another soul to be seen. Everyone had either left after Memorial Day weekend, or they were in for the night. It was us alone with the mountain.
And, there She was...what an incredible sight.
Thank you Mount Rainier.
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