Paradise

This summer we went up to Washington State to get out of the heat, visit family, enjoy nature and spend quality time with Baby Andrew.We pulled of on our way up to Paradise at Mount Rainier National park and found this beautiful waterfall.

Andrew was a good little hiking buddy for me. 

I welcomed people up to Paradise in behalf of the Muir family.  John Muir loved this place. 

What a gorgeous mountain meadow!  I love our national parks.

Bob had some business so he took another car and met us later.  Actually, he met me later.  When I met up with him I lost Megan, Chris, Andrew, and Joe.  I assumed they were going to hike up to the Muir Snowfields.  Bob and I headed up the path to try to meet them on the way up.  I heard some phantom group up ahead of us that sounded like Megan, Chris, Joe and a baby.  After a couple of hours of chasing them we finally crossed paths and it was the wrong Chris, Megan, Andrew, and Joe.  We weren't going to find them.  Our phones did not work up there.  Bob and I decided to just have a great hike since we had successfully ditched Joe.   

This was the moment we gave up the chase and decided to enjoy our day.

We saw a bunch of Marmots.  One of these little guys actually ran across Bob's foot on the path.  They made a clicking noise and a loud whistle.  I kept wondering who the heck was blowing a whistle until we witnessed the marmot making the noise.  We didn't feed this guy, but obviously someone had because he was chasing a chipmunk away from the people trail so that he could get anything we would throw his way.   

We made it up to the Muir Snowfields, but by then we were exhausted.  During the day the clouds parted only one time to reveal the mountain.  Fortunately that happened when we were about as high up as we were going to go.  Unfortunately we didn't get the camera out in time.  Most of our hike occurred in the misty soup of the day.  But we did not go to Washington for hot weather so we were okay with it.  I was grateful that I had worn a fleece inner jacket and a waterproof, windproof outer layer.

We saw herds of deer eating the beautiful, lush foliage of the meadow.

When we got back to the car we realised that Megan and Chris not only had Joe, they had all of the food and drinks that I had packed for the trip.  They had left a note on the car telling us that they had left about 2 or 3 hours before we did.  We were tired, achy, cold, hungry, and slightly damp but totally satisfied by all of the beauty Paradise had to offer.