Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument

Our first - and only scheduled - stop of the day was at the site of Custard's Last Stand. Inexplicably, it was crazy busy with people on a rather hot day.

Sent from my Samsung Galaxy smartphone.

Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument

Our first - and only scheduled - stop of the day was at the site of Custard's Last Stand. Inexplicably, it was crazy busy on a rather hot day.

Sent from my Samsung Galaxy smartphone.

Montana is Beautiful

It's easy to see why they call it Big Sky Country.  The sky has been clear and bright all day while the grass has been a lush green, which couldn't be said in many states we've seen, and the mountains have been picturesque. 

A little evening rain provided for a lovely rainbow, which looked better in person than we could photograph while driving at 80 mph (yes, its the speed limit) on the open highways here.

Relaxing in the Middle Row

A certain someone has moved up to the middle row in the van this week and is loving life there.

Grant-Kohrs Ranch National Historic Site

Montana

We're returning to Montana for the second time, but our first visit was for only about 15 minutes.  The northern 5 miles of Yellowstone stretch up into Montana and we drove them last year to see the Roosevelt Arch entrance there.  This time around, most of our driving day will be in Montana as we are driving almost fully across its width.

Idaho

Its our first time in Idaho.

Junior Ranger and BEST DAY EVER

We had lunch back at the visitor center and then wrapped up our visit to Rainier in usual fashion.

And then we grabbed ice cream before we left.  It was only about the fourteenth time today that Ryan enthusiastically proclaimed that today was the BEST DAY EVER!!!

Paradise Inn

On the way back to the visitor center, we checked out the Paradise Inn.  Its another one of the historic national park lodges.  We had wanted to stay here as we did Quinault Lodge, but this was also fully booked.  A large part of the Inn is being renovated, but the original portion was open.

Skyline Trail

After we reached the Myrtle Falls, we continued on for a bit on the Skyline Trail.  There was more incredibly gorgeous scenery everywhere we looked.

Myrtle Falls Trail

We hiked an easy trail from Paradise to the Myrtle Falls.  It was a stunningly beautiful walk!!!

Here are some pics of the actual Falls once we got there.

Snowball Fight

We were lucky enough to arrive at Mount Rainier at a great time.  The weather was perfect and there was still a lot of snow on the lower slopes near the visitor center that hadn't yet melted.  We encountered a patch super close and had a little snowball fight.

Paradise at Mount Rainier

The Henry M. Jackson visitor center is strategically located in Paradise.  It's the main visitor center for the Park and is located at an elevation of around 5,000 feet.  It was a gorgeous day with a temp in the mid 60s.  Here's a couple of pics of us outside the center.

And, in case you can't see the Mountain behind us in those pics, here is a shot of just Rainier.  The summit reaches over 14,000 feet and is often shrouded in the clouds as its so large that it creates its own weather patterns.

Mount Rainier National Park

Here is the southern entrance to Rainier (from Seattle).

And here is a video of a waterfall from Rainier's snow melt that we encountered on the drive in to Paradise.

Merriman Falls

The Merriman Falls were just inside the National Park, but we had to transverse one of the worse roads in America to get from the Forest to the Park.  Inexplicably, the road was gravel and extremely bumpy.  We might as well as been offroading, but the falls were well worth it in person.

Ryan and I climbed quite a bit up the rocks to get an even better view of the upper falls.  Pro tip: ask Ryan about his descent back down from the rocks.

Lake Quinault Lodge

After our 2 hour hike along the Rain Forest Trail, we dined for lunch in the Roosevelt Room of the historic Lake Quinault Lodge.  We had hoped to stay at the Lodge, but it's intimate size and our relatively short notice planning worked against us. Lunch seemed like a nice alternative.

Rain Forest Trail

My favorite part of our Olympic visit was the Rain Forest Trail that we hiked.  It was about 4 miles in length with about 3 of the miles in the rain forest and the last mile along Lake Quinault.

The views of both the rain forest and lake were equally beautiful, although quite different from each other.  Here are some pics from our hike.