Our First Stop - a photo on Flickriver

Our First Stop

Mount Rainier National Park
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Our tour of Washington State continued, at this point of our trip we were nearly three weeks into our journey across the country, this was the furthest North I was ever up to this point and it was a blast seeing some states I never had the chance to see. Our next stop was Mount Rainier, we had no idea on how long we wanted to spend at the park or where we were even going to stay. The original plan was to spend a day or two at Mount Rainier before heading to Seattle for a night and then spending two more nights in Olympic National Park. The weather sort of ruined that for us though. Upon arriving at Mount Rainier late one evening, fog covered nearly the whole park, the mountain wasn't visible, with a positive thought we decided to stay at the National Park Inn located inside the park near Longmire. I ended up booking it for two nights.
We woke up the next morning and excitedly looked out the window only to see the mountain still shrouded in fog. We drove around all day and decided to do some hikes in the misty weather. On our day trip around the mountain we saw hundreds of waterfalls, a fox and an odd looking turkey. We were able to get a good feel for the park before the weather cleared up which was also nice. After staying in the National Park Inn for one night, we decided to move our reservation up to Paradise. Paradise is just what it sounds like, Paradise. Located at the base of the mountain the hotel was pretty amazing, we hung out in the lobby for a good majority of the day after our hikes and listened to the piano player. After fighting to get a room with a better view, and a bottle of wine or three, we called it a night.
We woke up once again to see the mountain shrouded, it was starting to get discouraging, I didn't drive all this way to not get any photos of the famous mountain. It technically was our last day in the park, we had to make the decision, should we wait another day or two and cancel Seattle, or should we just chalk it up as a loss and head out for Seattle? We both agreed we wanted to stay in the park, we enjoyed the hotel and atmosphere and to top it off the park was amazing. So, we went for another drive, we ended up driving all the way down to Tipsoo Lake, pretty much right on the parks boundary line, did a few more hikes including Grove of the Patriarchs and Stevens Canyon. We decided to head back up to the hotel, then I pulled out near "The Bench" turned around and there it was! The mountain finally decided to show its face, and it was massive! I remember talking to someone saying the Tetons are the most amazing mountains in the lower 48, but nothing could prepare me for Rainier finally poking out of the clouds. The size of the mountain was just incredible. Of course after that it was photo time, every pull off, every angle, I wanted to capture that mountain just in case it snuck behind those clouds again, luckily it didn't.
Eventually we made it back to the hotel, and the view might have been the best from that area, I decided I wanted to "snowshoe" a little, the problem with that was I didn't have any snowshoes....I didn't last more than 10 minutes before my boots were full of cold mountain water, but I got some cool pictures!
Overall, Rainier is easily in my top five National Parks in the states still till this day. I am really hoping to get back there within the next 2-3 years and do some serious hiking so hopefully that all works out. The waterfalls in the park are amazing, I was there during the big melt so that helped out a lot, but still the park is magnificent. The mountain itself is just perfect enough to go and sit and look at for a few hours, but there are so many more factors that make this park one of the best in the country, if you are ever out in the Northwest make sure to go and check this place out, I promise you won't be disappointed.

Taken on: June 13, 2012

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Sets appears in: • Mt. Rainier National Park • D800 HDR more » • National Parks/Monuments/Ect • HDR « less

Camera: Nikon D800, f/13.0, 1/640 sec, 65mm, ISO 1250 (more info) (hide info)

Camera:	Nikon D800
Aperture:	f/13.0
Exposure Time:	0.002 sec (1/640)
Focal Length:	65mm
ISO:	1250
Exposure Bias:	0 EV
Flash:	Off, Did not fire
Exposure Program:	Program AE
Exposure Mode:	Auto
Metering Mode:	Multi-segment
White Balance:	Auto
Gain Control:	High gain up
Color Space:	sRGB
Software:	Adobe Photoshop CS6 (Windows)
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