Our next visit was around Mt. Ranier National Park. We stayed in a very small town called Packwood – in a restored cabin that at one point had been a structure within the Ohana Springs Resort, located inside of Mt. Ranier National Park. The boys thought this cabin was the best spot we’ve ever picked to stay.
We are back to some hiking adventures and felt so good. William scouted a great one today and it was beautiful. ~8 miles and 5K in altitude change ^ so we’re all going to sleep well. I think Rawlings has reached the point of having more stamina and zero grumbles on the hike, maybe until the last half mile stretch when we were already to sit down.
Couple firsts!
– First time breaking into a National Park 😉
– First time hiking in a National Park and seeing zero other ppl on the trail
– First time the boys really wanted to keep going on the hike and we said, eh we need to turn around (shouting “but our legs don’t hurt!” – you’ll see why we turned around below)
Boys breaking into the gate 😉 don’t worry – you’re allowed to – just means you have to walk the extra miles to/from trails
Getting started
Pretty lookout spot for lunch
And then we kept hiking from the Silver Falls loop up the Patriarch Graves offshoot and found… snow (started to fully cover trail and get deeper so.. we turned around. No one was wearing boots)
Walked back to down to finish the loop and found a beautiful lookout
And home stretch.
We all rested here at the end of the day after some tacos at White Pass taqueria!
The next day, was about finding a good vantage point to see Mt. Ranier. Instead of going into the park, William found a trail in Pinchot National forest that has a great observation point – Dry Creek trail. The trail itself was subject to more downed trees than in the park and when we got started, one of those had been setup as a bridge.
The trail the previous day may have technically been longer and had more elevation change involved, but today’s trail was legit up up up – very little flat and it was a harder hike for all. Rawls summed it up well here:
But making it to the observation point was entirely worth it! There aren’t many spots to see Mt. Ranier really well and the highlight of the hike was staring out at this for a good long while:
And then to make the trek down which was quite pleasant
We came back to the cabin, enjoyed the hot tub and rested for a bit. Our plan was to go to what we’d heard was the best burger spot in all of Washington (per Yelp and USA Today and everyone you ask around here) – but Cliff Droppers was closed upon arrival. Amazingly in this year of unpredictable times, this is the first time we’ve shown up somewhere to find it closed. So we taught the boys the word “pivot” – visited the grocery for steaks/Bellas/mashed potatoes and William is currently cooking things out here:
Colledge Adventures 