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.