Category: Mt. Rainier

This summer certainly hasn’t been as exciting as I would have wanted, but we haven’t been locked in the house throughout the sunniest days of the month.  Nope, we have ventured out to Mt. Rainier twice in the last two weeks, though we’ve tried to avoid popular locations.  Our first outing was to Snow Lake on the south-eastern side of Mt. Rainier, giving us a different look at the mountain than we get from home.

Although flowers weren’t as abundant as I imagine they were at Paradise, they were still lots of flowers.  I stopped to photograph this flower that none of us could identify on our way up to the lake. 

I’m glad I did or I would never have noticed this grouse family, which was foraging right behind me.  Leslie and Paul who were just ahead of me never even noticed them, though they couldn’t. have been more than two feet from the trail.

We were rewarded at the end of the trail by a small, but beautiful Snow Lake.  

The trek back to the parking lot was made easier by the abundant flowers,

especially since taking shots of them gave me an excuse to take a short break.

It was a surprisingly beautiful hike, but it came at a price: the entire two miles were up and down, with hardly a level spot on the entire trip. 

Once we reached the parking lot it seemed like a small price to pay for such beauty.  

Boy, am I glad that we decided to make a loop out of our trip from Narada Falls to Reflection Lake and back to the car even though it was a further.  Paradise Creek lived up to its name with falls

after falls,

after falls,

with peek-a-boo closeups of Mt Rainier.

Hard to imagine a better way to end a day that managed to get even better with a meal at the Wildberry Cafe.

We finally spotted a few wildflowers after we began our return to Narada Falls.  As we approached tree-line, we saw a few of these purple flowers still blooming.

I spotted an Osprey flying over Reflection Lake, and Paul spotted this Red-Breasted Nuthatch.

The only other birds we sighted were â€?”Robber Jays,” now known officially as Canada Jays, which greeted us several times looking for handouts.  They made their official visits, however,  when we stopped for lunch.

The two gray blurs in this shot are Canada Jays diving after the trail mix Leslie held in her hand.

They were far too close, and too fast, to catch in flight, so I settled for this shot of one taking a cracker from Les.

It’s easy to get caught up in the beauty of Mt Rainier towering in the distance, but experiencing nature up close adds a whole other dimension to Wilderness.

On Thursday we headed out to walk another stretch of the Wonderland Trail, from Narada Falls to Reflection Lake. It was overcast and a little cool when we started, but it still offered some beautiful scenery from the overlook.

and it’s hard to imagine a more inspiring place to start a hike than at Narada Falls.

Most of the hike up to Reflection Lake was in deep forest, so it didn’t really matter if it was overcast or clear.  

Very few flowers grow in the Northwest’s old-growth forests, but mushrooms seem to thrive on the litter and decaying trees that are part of a mature forest. If I had stopped to take photos of every mushroom I saw I would have never kept up with Leslie and Paul so I focused on the biggest

and most

 interesting mushrooms.  

At first glance, these looked like bright red flowers, but they turned out to be some kind of small red berry.

It was a bit of an uphill slog, but the climb seemed more than worth it when we reached Reflection Lake, 

our turn-around point.