Mt. Rainier National Park, Washington

Time was running out on the opportunity to get up to the Sunrise Visitor Center in Mount Rainier National Park. The road that leads up to Sunrise will close for the winter on October 12. We had planned to drive up there a week ago, but the weather got yucky. We'd been checking on the weather site daily to find another good day....and today was that day! The forecast was for clear, sunny and cool.



The road to Sunrise is in the north east section of the park and we got there via Hwy. 410 from the town of Puyallup (say: pew al up). From Tumwater, where we are living, it was a 105-mile drive to our destination. Hwy. 410 near to the park entrance, is closed to all traffic during winter months, due to very heavy snowfall. Admission to the park is $15.00 per car, but we paid ZERO because of the Senior Pass Bruce now has.



This is the White River/Sunrise Road leading to trail heads and the visitor center. In just a few days, it will be closed. The view from the road was magnificent.

Mt. Rainier is a towering, ice-clad volcano that rises 14,411 feet above sea level. Although currently dormant, it is not extinct. The 35 square miles of glaciers constitute the largest single-peak glacial system in the contiguous U.S. Impressive no matter how you look at it. Up at the Sunrise Visitor Center we got a great, clear view of the mountain and the dry meadow in front of us.

To the left of the mountain in this photo, you can get a good view of the Emmons Glacier.

Heavy growth forests cover the mountainsides up to 5,000 feet. Sunrise is above that level at 6,400 feet. You will find smaller trees and fewer trees here. The timberline is at about 6,500 feet. Alpine meadows are lush and green in early summer and wildflowers abound at that time, too. By now, the heat of summer has deadened the meadow grass.

From the parking lot, we walked up a short path to the Sourdough Trail. From there you could take a couple of hiking trails...but we aren't hikers so we just went so far and then stopped to admire the view. From this level we could see the parking lot and ranger station below us. More peaks of the Cascade Range are in the distance. The ranger station and the visitor center are closed already but the parking area stays open until mid-October (12th this year).

This is the path we took from the parking area up to the trail heads. There is a trail called The Wonderland Trail that you can access from up here. That trail encircles Mt. Rainier and totals 93 miles in length if you were to hike it completely. There are many other short hikes suitable for leisure hikers, too. (none of these areas were handicapped accessible)

Here I am with more of the Cascade Mountain Range behind me. This would be looking off toward the north west section of the national park.

I had Bruce pose for me with the majestic Mt. Rainier behind him. You can easily see the tremendous snowfields and glaciers, too. It was only 48 degrees up here on this brilliant, sunny day. The Cascade Mountain Range has been volcanically active for millions of years. This mountain is "young" at only 500,000 years old.

Although this part of the national park will close shortly, the Paradise Visitor Center in the south west corner of the park stays open year round....except when extreme weather causes closures. This happens a couple of times each winter, but park service folks and state road workers get the roads open asap. We have been to the Paradise Visitor Center a couple of times, but had never driven up here to Sunrise. Had to do it! From this area at Sunrise, you have the closest view you can get by driving in your vehicle. The only way you can get closer is on foot.

Here you can see the boarded up Visitor Center building. The lower windows get covered with heavy sheets of plywood in preparations for the upcoming, harsh winter. The snow level will come up past those lower windows. It has already snowed up here a couple of times during the night. Temps during the night are below freezing, as fall is getting ready to pass into winter up on this mountain.

After we left the Visitor Center area, we drove back out the way we came (only road) and stopped at Sunrise Point. From here we could look down at the beautiful Sunrise Lake. We let Annie get out of the car here as it was a short walk to view the lake. When we were up at the Visitor Center we walked on the path for quite a while and there were many steps, so with her heart condition, we felt it was in her best interests to leave her in the car with water and her cozy dog bed to wait in.

Mount Rainier National Park is just one of the beautiful natural areas in our great state of Washington. If any of you get the opportunity to come here, please check out this wonderful, national treasure.

Check it out:http://www.visitrainier.com

Until next time......so long for now!

Our Labor of Love

We've had 2 days of annoying internet/connection issues and I think they are behind us now. Hoping they are anyway.........

A couple of days ago, Bruce and I tackled the semi-annual task of cleaning and tidying up the graves of some of our family members. I like to do this once in the spring, after winter has gone away and then once more in the fall, before the winter sets in. As it turns out, the cemetery in question lies right to the west of our RV park home when we are here in Tumwater. We could have easily walked over there, but I wanted to take some cleaning supplies with us and Annie was practically begging to go along, so we took the car. Annie can't walk that far.

We drove in and made our first stop at the graves of my parents and my brother. Both Mom and Dad passed away while living here in Tumwater after moving up from Clarkdale, Arizona. They moved up here due to Mom's second diagnosis of breast cancer. She enjoyed 2 years here before leaving us in 2002. Dad passed away after a sudden onset of illness in 2007 and was buried here with Mom.

My brother, Robert, passed away in 1994 from complications related to AIDS. He was cremated and interred in Arizona. After Mom passed away, we had his remains sent here and we buried his urn in the casket with her. So, now they are all here together. I feel it is my loving duty to take care of their markers and see that all things are in good shape with that.

Bruce takes his turn at scrubbing away all of the dirt and gunk that attached itself to the headstone.

Once that task was complete, I stood back to see how things looked. We could easily read the names on the marker now.
Next, we drove the short distance down the road in the cemetery to "Babyland". We have a little granddaughter buried here. This is a sad one to attend to, but I lovingly do this job for her since I can do nothing else at this time. This precious girl was stillborn and we never got the chance to see her live and grow. I come here a few times a year and place flowers at her grave since her mother no longer lives in the area. Grandmas do those kinds of things.

Here I am scrubbing away at Sydney's headstone to make it shine again.

Grandpa gets a bucket of water and splashes it on the marker to remove the soap suds.

Once again, we can clearly read the name of our Sydney. Forever an angel.
Life is made up of joys and sorrows for all of us. We all hope that the joys will outnumber the sorrows. I wish all of you many of life's joys in the years ahead!

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Until next time.....so long for now!

I Feel The Need to Clarify RE: 50 amp, Who Knew?

On my post from yesterday I wrote about how we were able to connect to a 50 amp electric service at our current location. I feel the need to clarify what I think appears to have been misunderstood by some of my readers.

We are not taking service from another space that is entitled to it, and thus no longer has a 50 amp connection. This park was never intended to be an RV park. It was built as a mobile home park. Somewhere along the line the old owner eliminated some of the broken down mobile homes and changed those spaces into RV sites.

The layout for the utility service on these RV spaces is not organized well, as in regular RV campgrounds or parks. The new owner pretty much just added new electric boxes where it was easiest to get to the underground wires. Not a lot of effort really going into laying it out like it probably should have been. But, hey...it works.

In addition to all of this, the refurbished sites all have access to numerous connections and NONE are designated for any particular site. For instance, behind our motorhome we have a choice of 3....count them 3....connections at our disposal. Same thing with the people in the motorhome diagonally behind us.

So, I want to make it understood that we did not swipe a hook-up from a space not our own and figure...."hey we got ours, so too bad for you!" We have the manager's approval and we have paid the additional monthy fee for 50 amp.

Bruce and I have been RVing since 1988. We try to be courteous, friendly, helpful and cooperative with our RV neighbors and the management of every place we stay. We have always lived our lives by the Golden Rule, "Do unto others, as you would have them do unto you".

Anyway, I just wanted to throw this clarification out there so my readers don't think we are a couple of moronic, selfish, dunderheads. We are not.

Comments are always appreciated and encouraged....so please continue!
Until next time......so long for now!

50 amp Service....Who Knew?

We've been here at the Allimor RV/Mobile Park for about 6 weeks or so. When we checked in here last August, we got ourselves settled into one of the refurbished RV sites. We checked in the electric boxes around the site we selected and they were all 30 amp service. Oh heck, we thought. Why didn't the owner put in any 50 amp outlets when he did the refurbishing?

About 3 weeks ago, we were out in the area behind the RV looking at something....I don't remember what.....and I happened to notice that the 5th wheel parked behind us was plugged into a box that had 50AMP scratched on top of it. Huh??? We looked under the box cover and sure enough, there was a 50 amp cord plugged into a 50 amp receptacle. Then we walked over to a motorhome parked next to the 5ver and they had a 50 amp receptacle too. Holy Cow!

We saw the lady in the 5ver the next day and she mentioned that they were leaving by October 1st. Our eyes sort of glazed over when she said this as we had visions of being able to plug in with 50 amp service. We probably had some dopey looking expression on our faces as well as the glazed over eyes as she continued talking. We weren't hearing any of it now, I'm sure. We saw Bill, the manager, the next day and we told him that when the 5ver couple left we were going to plug into that 50 amp receptacle. "What 50 amp?" he asked. We then showed him the 2 boxes there behind our rig. He didn't even know they were there. Those are the only 2 in the place as we have now made a thorough investigation.

Bill told us to feel free to hook-up there as soon as the other folks vacated their space. The best part was we didn't even have to move the motorhome. Our cord was just moved over about 3 feet to the other box. We did find out yesterday that the owner wants an additional $20 a month for the 50 amp sites. OK by us and we paid our rent this morning.

If anybody comes along to set up behind us where the 5ver was, it will be no problem for them to hook-up with the 30 amp service. As you can see in this photo below, most of the electric hook-ups are so close together as to almost be ridiculous. During the recent refurbishment, they were left in the hodge-podge way they were originally, just with newer boxes etc. From several of the RV spaces you could hook-up into about 6 different boxes.

Here is the back end of our Tour, with it now plugged into the 50 amps. Yippee, this means that we won't have to juggle our power usage this winter like we did last winter. We spent 5 months here during the winter with only the 30 amp service. It was a challenge, to say the least. If we had the space heater on we couldn't operate the dryer and the microwave at the same time. We were always shuffling around what was operating. Good experience, though.
Here is an example of the "unfinished work" that I don't think is really going to be finished any time soon with the services here. My question is, if you are going to go to all the trouble and expense of improving some of the RV spaces, why leave it like this???

They did put in a much improved water hook-up with it and the sewer connection boxed in. These services are not in a uniform line or direction either, though. Again...I don't think the owner wanted to fully refurbish to the point of digging everything up and moving water lines, sewer lines and what have you. Go figure.

We think the set up is funny, but we aren't complaining out loud. It's all worth the cost of cheap rent here. It's fine with us. Especially with 50 amp service!!!

Until next time.....so long for now!