For this year’s Spring Break, we decided to fly to Washington and explore the 3 National Parks there – Mount Rainier National Park, Olympic National Park, and North Cascades National Park. We flew into Seattle and spent two nights in Mercer Island with Brian’s wonderful cousin Tina and her family. We spent the first part of our Spring Break sledding, hiking, and just enjoying the gorgeous Pacific Northwest!
We hiked, saw a super cool bridge, a waterfall, and lots of mossy trees. Really pretty!
We ventured into Seattle before heading to Mount Rainier National Park. We didn’t spend a lot of time there, but we saw all of the important sights and had a really fun time checking it out!
We made our way to Mount Rainier National Park after our morning in Seattle. We had reservations to stay inside the park at the National Park Inn. As we got closer and closer to Mt. Rainier, the snow got higher and higher. This Florida family was not disappointed!
It was pretty late by the time we arrived, so we walked over to the gift shop and browsed, then we got some information about which hikes were open. It’s difficult to visit some of the Washington National Parks in the winter because the weather is still snowy and many roads are still closed. However, that also means that the crowds are very minimal and you have many of the hiking paths all to yourself!
The National Park Inn is very rustic, with no wifi, no tv’s, and no refrigerator in the room. But we had a two room suite and it was the perfect space for our family. The dining room was not open due to COVID, but the restaurant packed up food to go and we were free to eat it in the “fireplace room”, which was lovely.
The next morning we woke up, bundled up, grabbed some snowshoes from the shop, and headed out on a hike. My goal was to make it up the mountain to the point where I could see fresh snow. It was drizzly when we started, but as we hiked to higher elevations, the drizzle turned to snow and it was perfect! We hiked the Rampart Ridge Trail, which started out steep then leveled off once we got to the top of the ridge. It was almost 5 miles roundtrip and a lot of it was through the snow. Hiking through snow is no joke!
We started the hike in snowshoes, but we ended up taking them off because the path was mostly dirt at the bottom of the mountain. The snowshoes were included with our hotel reservation, otherwise we wouldn’t have bothered. We could have used them higher up during our hike, but we just never took the time to put them back on.
We were hoping the road up the mountain from Longmire (where we were staying) to Paradise (higher up the mountain) would open while we were there, but no luck, the weather kept it closed. We were a little bit disappointed, but we felt like the hike we were able to do was a really nice way to explore Mount Rainier National Park.
As a side note, in order to enter Mount Rainier in the winter, you must have tire chains in your vehicle. We had to rent them, so on the way out of the Park we stopped to return them and had the most delicious meal. It was a Ukrainian restaurant at Paradise Village in Ashford and their crepes SO GOOD. It was actually Brian’s birthday, so crepes made for a perfect special birthday breakfast! Tire chain and crepes… one stop shopping, Lol.
This meal kept us full until we reached Olympic National Park, about a 3 hour drive. Next up, a couple days in Olympic… stay tuned!
