While we haven't visited all 63 of our National Parks, we've been fortunate enough to have been to quite a few of them. We even had the opportunity to spend some time in the American Samoa National Park a few years ago (the only national park in the Southern Hemisphere).
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| The drive from Cannon Beach took us through Astoria. No drive through Astoria would be complete without Fish & Chips at the Bowpicker! |
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| We enjoyed stopping at the Mount St. Helens Visitors Center. The visitors center provides a very interesting look at the 1980 volcanic eruption of the mountain. |
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| The visitors center is located about 40 miles from the mountain. |
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| There were numerous displays and a very informative movie |
Since we were relatively close, we weren't going to pass up the opportunity to check Mount Ranier National Park off the list. Mount Rainier National Park was established in 1899, making it the fourth oldest. Over 97 percent of its 236,000 acres are undeveloped, protected wilderness. The centerpiece of the park is the 14,400 mountain itself, which is often hidden by clouds and fog.
We spent two nights at a small motel in the one red light town of Morton, Washington which gave us one full day to explore the park. If you pass through Morton and are hungry, Chimis Mexican Restaurant is pretty good! The weather forecast for the day of our visit wasn't too favorable. It called for a cloudy, rainy and foggy day. Unfortunately, the forecast was right, but we didn't let that change our plans to visit the park.
We entered the park through the Nisqually entrance and enjoyed driving to the Henry Jackson Memorial Visitors Center. There were several short trails and waterfalls along the very scenic drive that we enjoyed. On a clear day the large windows at the visitors center would have given us a great view of the mountain. On this particular day, we had a great view of rain, clouds and fog! In spite of the less than ideal weather we enjoyed our visit, reminding us once again that you can't always judge the day by the weather!
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| The scenic overlook wasn't as scenic as it could have been......... |
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| but the trails were great! |
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| There's a mountain out there somewhere! |
