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Yes! We did see the mountain! All 14,411′ of it!
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As it turned out we couldn't have chosen a better time for our little vacation than last week.
Well .. almost .. we did have some rain, but only for one day and the rest of them were absolutely perfect!
And not only did we see the mountain but we also hit peak-fall-color time! Apparently this was a little earlier than normal so we were very lucky.
This is how we saw the mountain on our approach to the eastern entrance where we were also extremely lucky to not have to wait in line.
In summer this can take up to more than 2 hours!
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| The Nisqually entrance |
We were so happy about this, exited to be in the park and that the weather was so absolutely perfect, that we completely overshot our first stop in the park, the little town of Longmire.
Fortunately nothing that a u-turn and a 5 minute back-track couldn't fix, so we were quickly back on track.
Here's a map to show where we are ... we're following that green road at the bottom from the Nisqually-entrance on the left to the Stevens-Canyon entrance on the right.
Longmire was the first settlement in the park that became it's headquarters when the park was established in 1899 and which is preserved as a National Historic Landmark District.
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| The 'new' headquarters building |
The 'old' headquarters building now houses a museum that tells the story of the early days of the park and the newer Longmire Administration Building, completed in 1930, still holds offices for park staff and is home to the Longmire Wilderness Information Center.
After we'd taken a look at both we went for a short hike on the Trail of the Shadows, which is an easy 0.7 mile loop on the grounds where there used to be a mineral springs resort.
The remnants of a few of the bubbling cold-to-warm volcanic mineral seeps/springs are still visible, although you can't bath in them anymore, and you can peer into the one-room, oldest-surviving historic cabin along the way.
Next up, about 5 miles up the road, we came to Christina Falls.
This is a 69-foot, two-tiered waterfall, framed by a historic arched stone bridge (upper tier 32 feet, lower tier 37 feet).A short, easily accessible 0.1-mile walk brings you down from the bridge to the basin where the fall ends up into.
It's a beautiful fall!
Another 5 miles further up the road you'll find the Narada Falls, another stunning 2-tiered (188-foot) waterfall.
Located just 150 feet from the road between Longmire and Paradise, it's the largest waterfall easily viewable and accessible by car in the park:
The rather steep trail down is absolutely worth it!
By now it was time to drive up to Paradise, the place that offers everything people hope to see : wildflower meadows, waterfalls, a close-up look at the Mountain, and panoramic vistas of the Tatoosh Range.
And you’ll get all of that without sacrificing comfort!
There's only one problem .. the parking lot cannot possibly hold all the cars that come up every day. By sunrise 2/3 of the lot is filled and after 8am you can forget to get a spot until about 3 or 4pm when people are starting to leave!
Before you start to drive the last 3 mile approach to Paradise, and the parking lot, electronic signs with flashing lights will warn you if it's full, which it was in our case.
Many people park along the road up and down, which will make for a very long walk both ways, so we decided to take a chance and started to circle around the lot to see if someone would pull out.
And Lo and behold, our luck was holding and we grabbed a spot!
And it was worth it, because this is what we saw!
Mt Rainier is beautiful by itself of course but with the crimson colored Huckleberries in the foreground it was absolutely stunning!
We walked up one of the many trails a bit to get even better views ...
Looking back towards the visitor center you see some of the (25!) peaks of the Tatoosh Range: 
Unfortunately we didn't see any wildlife although quite often there are sightings of deer and marmots, but I guess it was too late in the day for that.
Nevertheless, words can hardly describe how beautiful everything looked, it was absolutely stunning!
We made a quick visit to the visitor center, where we walked through some exhibits and sat down for a short film about the park.
After which we started to make our way towards the east of the park where we would exit to make the 13 mile drive to our hotel in Packwood.
Following Stevens Canyon Road, a 19-mile scenic highway, we passed these Reflection Lakes, which are pair of shallow alpine lakes:
Earlier in the day, when the sun hits the mountain just so and the water is completely still, it will be beautifully mirrored/reflected in the lake.Since we were there around 4 in the afternoon this was not the case, but it was still a beautiful view.
We made one more stop at Box Canyon, where we walked a short 0.5-mile loop tracing the rim of the canyon .. of course with the mountain still visible in the background ... A bridge spans the canyon ... 
From where you can see the Muddy Fork of the Cowlitz River roaring 180 feet below ... 
We were quite 'done' when we arrived at the hotel, but wow, what a gorgeous day! The Packwood Inn turned out to be very basic but oh well, it was cheap, had a good bed, a hot shower and everything was clean so .. what more do you need?
We had dinner at the very rustic Blue Spruce Saloon.
Very much a local hangout with a fun, country atmosphere which served a rather nice mushroom burger.
For our breakfast in the morning there was the Mountain Goat which had good coffee and a nice breakfast-burrito/scone.
Rather overpriced but we're constantly amazed about how much everything costs these days so nothing new there ... yeah, we're getting old.
Enough to get wet but not enough to keep us from going back into the park for some more sight-seeing. It is what it is if you only have 2 days!
We drove back along the Stevens Canyon Rd to 'The Bench', a trailhead that would take us to two small lakes, Snow-Lake and Bench Lake.
We both wore our trusty raincoats (which we bought in Tillamook on a camping-trip following Hwy 1 to Northern Washington in 2001!), and James brought an umbrella.
(Which in hind-side was a very good idea since he stayed much dryer while my pants got soaked, mostly from rain dripping down from my coat!)This trail is marked 'moderate' and it definitely has it's challenges, mainly because it's elevation differences which involved a lot of climbing up and down stairs, tree-roots and hills.
Especially when the trail is wet!
But we persevered and made it to both lakes.
Unfortunately the view down at the lake was not existing but the sub-alpine meadows made up for it being covered in fall colors ...
That afternoon, after a quick bite at a Mexican restaurant back in Packwood, we did another small hike (3 miles) near the entrance of the park, to the Silver Falls.
By than it had rained for most of the day and we had to skirt some large puddles on the trail. Fortunately there were (rough) bridges at the wettest places as well as over some small creeks:The undergrowth here is extremely lush and dense ... like a rainforest .. which it is!The trees are humongous and some of the old growth stands over hundreds of years old: 
The path takes you upstream along Ohanapecosh River which is arguably the most beautiful in Mount Rainier National Park, with water so clear you can see all the way to the bottom in many places.
Even at the end of summer it's a wild, rushing river, tumbling over large rocks and ledges all the way down to the falls where it plunges 40 feet down into a deep pool:From a bridge over the river, where you stand very close to the falls, you have a great view and the loud, crashing sound of the falling water is very impressive.Despite the wet weather it was another beautiful hike and the falls at the end were certainly worth the effort.
This was our last hike in the park and after a good night sleep we woke up to a lightly overcast, but dry day!
Our coats, pants and shoes had dried overnight and we were ready for our next destination, the town of Leavenworth, an easy 3 hour drive north from here.
We stopped from some coffee at a rest-area from where you had an incredible view over the valley and city of Yakima and not one, but two mountains!
Mt Adams on the left (picture above) and Mt Rainier on the right, which I couldn't get in the same shot so here's a shot all by himself ...
(notice that there's much more snow on this North side!)
Everything went smootly, the last 35 miles were particularly beautiful, driving through dense forest (again: beautiful fall colors!) and scaling a pass (Blewett Pass).
We arrived in Leavenworth around noon:
When we got to our hotel we were pleasantly surprised by the fact that we could check in right away and that it turned out to be a great room, much more attractive than the previous one! 
We quickly unpacked and walked over to main street, which was only a block from the hotel. How perfect was that?
Time for some Bratwurst with sauerkraut, of which we'd had visions for weeks now!
There you go, a Bratwurst and a Weisswurst, some German potato salad and a big glass of beer! Just what the doctor ordered.  |
| Delicious! |
We went for a slow stroll through main-street paying a visit to the town's museum first where we learned that Leavenworth really doesn't have any German 'roots', but turning it 'Bavarian' was an attempt to save a dying town (after the gold rush and the end of the railroad-line) by attracting tourism to the beautiful area.
Next up: The Nutcracker Museum. Yes, seriously, more than 9,000 nutcrackers collected since the 1960s, making it one of only two nutcracker museums in the world!They come in all shapes, sizes and materials and for any special occasion, season, holiday and came from all over the world.What a hoot!
Of course there was an all-year Christmas store, The Kris Kringl shop: 
Also a Gingerbread Factory:
And weirdly enough a Danish Bakery .. oh well, why not?
All stores, restaurants, and as a matter of fact all houses in this cute little town have a Bavarian style frontage, with beautiful balconies and overflowing flower-baskets.
In many ways it's actually more Bavarian than the real thing, some say almost a little 'Disney-park' like, but done very, very well.
It's so real that I had to remind myself repeatedly that I wasn't really there and that the people really didn't speak German!
Here are some of those gorgeous shops/houses:
We bought some cheese, crackers and sausage to go with the nuts, beer and wine we'd brought from home and had a nice happy hour/light dinner at the patio in front of our room:
When the lights came on we walked back into town to see all the buildings lit up:
After a great night of sleep in our cute bed we went for a filling breakfast in the morning at the 'Renaissance Café', one of the only ones that opens at 7.
(We're early risers and are usually ready for breakfast before 8!)
To get there though, you must drive on a road that has quite a few potholes and the last 3 miles are unpaved and very bumpy!
We started around 9.30 and it was a slightly cloudy, rather cool morning, great for walking up a sweat ...
The path follows the Icicle Creek/river on each side and 2 bridges bring you from one side to the other to create the loop trail.
Some of the rock-formations down at the river were beautifully striated ...Just like in Mt Rainier Park there were lots of pretty Fall-colors here as well ...
We'd brought some coffee and some Apfelstrudel, which we'd picked up at the Danish Bakery in town, so we took a little break when we were about halfway ...
These cheeky little chipmunks immediately appeared when we sat down so we shared some nuts from the granola-bars that we'd brought.
They're Townsend's Chipmunks and are very common here in the dense forest of the Cascades.
Here's another regular of these forests, a Grey Jay, the most conspicuous bird of the park during the entire year, also known as Canadian Jay or Camp Robber.
That last name is very appropriate since you have to be careful that they won't steal the cookies out of your hands or the sandwiches from your plate.
We didn't see any other wildlife and not too many people on this hike either. We pretty much had the place for ourselves. Just like we like it!
OK, here's one more of the Fall colors. They were just so beautiful ...
That afternoon we drove to Cashmere, a little town about 6 miles to the south-east of Leavenworth, home of the Aplets & Cotlets ... no clue what those were but we've been enlightened!
Turned out these are the turkish-fruit type of candies I buy every Christmas and which I absolutely loooove!
They are soft, chewy, jelly-like fruit and nut confections dusted with powdered sugar, created as an American version of Turkish delight.I'm used to another brand tough, that calls them something different, so I didn't realize what they were ..
The shop in town gives tours through the little factory but that day they had a problem with one of the machines and the tours were cancelled.
But you could see from the shop onto the work-floor through two windows :
Of course we did some free sampling. Apparently Aplets are made with a base of crisp Washington apples and crunchy walnuts whereas Cotlets are made with a base of tangy ripe apricots and crunchy walnuts.
They were delicious, so we bought a small box. They were a lot more expensive than the one I can get at Bi-mart!
Also in Casmere, you'll find Apple Annie's and no she doesn't sell apples or even apple pies, which was too bad, but ..... antiques!
With 70,000 square feet of antiques, collectibles, consignment furniture and unique gift ideas on display daily, with a rotation of up to 200 vendors, you could spend hours here hunting for treasures.
It is one of Washington’s largest antique malls and probably the largest one I've ever seen. 
Antique is a big word for what is offered here of course (in America for sure), so it's mostly just old stuff that people want to get rid of.
Living in an RV, like we do, there's only so much space available, and we are not big into filling our home with small nick-knacks to begin with, so we came out empty handed, but we had fun browsing around for a while.
That evening we went for a last, traditional Bavarian dinner in town, Jägerschnitzel with Rotkohl (tender pork cutlet topped with a savory mushroom gravy with red cabbage), which we split.
Desert was German chocolate cake. James' favorite!
And that was Leavenworth! Despite the maybe a little 'over the top Germanisation we really loved it.
I think we also planned our time there just right since the day we left the October-Fest was starting which means the town will be overrun by tourists, the hotels all booked (a year ahead!) and much more expensive and restaurants hard to get in to.
The same goes especially for Christmas, although it will certainly be a stunningly beautiful town when covered in snow while lit up by over half a million lights!
But all good things come to an end and the next day, after a nice breakfast at the Leavenworth Coffee & Waffles place, we started our way back.
We stopped at the same rest-stop, just before Yakima, as on the way up for a coffee and some donuts and another look at Mt Adams and Mt Rainier, after which we kept going until we reached the small town of Goldendale just before the Oregon border.
Just before town sits the Greek Orthodox women's monastery of St John the Forerunner, founded in 1995 home, at the moment, of 20 nuns and novices.We were interested in taking a look inside the church and were told on arrival that that is usually not allowed without an appointment but, lucky for us, they had a group coming in half an hour and we could tag along if we wanted.
As it turned out, the group never showed, and we ended up being the only ones there: 
There are now 20 nuns and novices at St. John’s Monastery.
The monastery supports itself solely by practicing the traditional arts of the Orthodox church including: writing Byzantine icons, knotting prayer ropes, making incense, and dipping beeswax candles.
They also mount icon prints and make natural soap and lotion and bake traditional Greek food and pastries for their bakery and gift shop.
Of course we bought some of their fancy Greek cookies!
Soon after we were on the road again, we entered Oregon and arrived at The Columbia River Gorge, the canyon of the Columbia River:
Up to 4,000 feet deep, the canyon stretches for over eighty miles as the river winds westward through the Cascade Range, forming the boundary between the state of Washington to the north and Oregon to the south.
We had planned to visit the Dallas Dam visitor Center but when we pulled up at the (empty) parking lot it turned out to be closed for the season!
We walked a trail towards the dam and took some pictures:
These are traditional Native American-style fishing platforms, still used by local native tribes:
They reserved the right to fish here, recognized and protected through 19th-century treaties between Native American tribes and the United States government.
Historically, local tribes relied on dipnets attached to long poles to catch salmon but modern tribal commercial and subsistence fisheries use set and drift gillnets.
From here you can also see Mt Hood in the distance, the third big mountain we've seen on this trip!
Moving further through the Gorge we noticed a sign for the Columbia Gorge Discovery Center & Museum and since we lucked out on the one at the Dallas Dam we decided to see if this one was open.
And it was! We thought the $10 entrance fee a little steep but once we started to go through the museum we realized this was definitely worth it.
What a beautiful place!
First of all it's a huge and very nice building and then there are so many incredible exhibits set up in rooms and 'scenes' from the geology of the gorge to the native people to the county of Wasco history. There was so much to see! 
We probably could have spend half a day here but too bad it was the end of a long day for us and we were getting tired so we called it quits after an hour or two.
We might be back!
But we weren't done yet! We had another stop scheduled 'since we were in the neighborhood' which was the Bonneville Fish Hatchery, located right next to the Bonneville lock and dam.
The Bonneville Fish Hatchery is the largest, and one of the oldest fish production facility operated by the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife .
We walked a bit over the grounds, following the fish signs painted on the roads and passing the many breeding and feeding ponds ...
We watched a short video about how the salmon are 'coming in', eggs are harvested (a little graphic there!) and the fish are 'raised' and ended up at the salmon hatchery where we spent some time watching the giant fall Chinook salmon jumping around and trying to get up to the next pond which was closed off to them that day.
We'd saved the best for last ... meet Herman, Oregon's most famous fish: 
Herman the Sturgeon is a 10-foot-long, 500-pound (!)white sturgeon who has lived at the Bonneville Fish Hatchery since 1998.
Sturgeon are prehistoric fish who have changed little over 200 million years, they have no scales or teeth and can live for more than 200 years!
Herman lives with smaller sturgeons and rainbow trout at the Sturgeon Viewing and Interpretive Center, which has a large pond and an underground viewing area.
He might be harmless but I don't think I would like to meet him when your dipping your toes in the river on a nice summer day!By now we were getting really hungry (trout any-one?) but were fortunately only 30 minutes away from Ristorante Di Pompello, an Italian restaurant in Troutdale.
Our plan was to let the heavy traffic around Portland (especially on a Friday afternoon) die down a bit before driving the last leg of our journey home.
So, why not having a nice dinner at our favorite Italian restaurant?
We were early so we didn't have to fight for a table, so early in fact that we had our dinner in record time which almost defeated the reason for stopping, but it took long enough to to make a difference. And like the two times we'd eaten here before, the food was excellent!
It was already dark when we got home at 8, and after we unpacked real quick we didn't make it very long before retiring to bed ... aaahhh, there's nothing like your own bed!
It was a beautiful trip and we enjoyed every minute of it but we're happy to be ...
home sweet home!
