Getting to Sunrise after sunrise

It wouldn’t be a Seattle summer if we didn’t make the trek out to lovely Mt Rainier! We left pretty early and drove 2 hours to check out the north side of the volcano, Sunrise visitors center.

Armed with plenty of candy, treats and PBJ, we took the trail up to Mt Fremont peak where you can check out an old fire lookout shelter perched on top. I can only imagine how intense that place would have been in a summer storm. We were equally concerned about not seeing a restroom for the caretaker either!

I forgot to mention, on our hike up to the peak we noticed a big black bear scampering by a couple hundred yards above us towards the top of the mountain ridge. Pretty exciting! As you can imagine Nora had lots of questions about black bears and wanted to triple check that they aren’t as aggressive as grizzly bears. After that she made me practice how quickly I could whip out our bear spray can.

The girls batted away aggressive squirrels during our mountain top picnic (hours after recounting a podcast talking about the seriousness of rabies disease among rodents). Thankfully no bites!

We hiked down the mountain and swung by a little alpine lake and camp area and took a quick break while checking out the local wildflowers and butterflys. Sadly, no mountain blueberries this time!

All in, I think it was around 5 or 6 miles round trip. I can’t wait to come back next year, maybe to camp!

{edited to add in photos!}

We got to the parking lot around 9am. We thought it would be colder than it was.

The start of the trail is pretty wide and uphill.

Eventually it levels off to a wide meadow next to "Frozen Lake" with pretty views of Rainier in the distance.

Family shot

A black bear sighting!! How exciting!

Don't worry, it was actually pretty far away. Do you see it in this photo?

The second leg of the hike was a bit more treacherous. We are headed to Mt Fremont Lookout Tower. Do you see the little black speck at the end of the trail, towards the left of the mtn there?

Not a good hike for little kids. Look how steep that is.

Made it!

The ledge in front of the tower

View from the Tower

Panaroma of the Tower

We sat on the rock and had lunch.

On the way back, we stopped by Shadow Lake

and rested for a bir

Skipping amongst the wildflowers

A giant among trees!

Don't be fooled by the smiles! There was a meltdown right before this.

LOTS of butterflies everywhere

Dinner on the way home. Evie's choice!

Comments

Family time

I had to do a quick trip to LA towards the end of July to say goodbye to my Uncle Pang, who passed away a few weeks earlier. I have fond memories of fun cousin time at his house in Palos Verdes and Uncle Pang taking us to the beach when we were younger. I remember how he delighted in making us kids squeal with laughter by pretending the car ride was a rolleroaster - we'd take sharp turns and all of us kids would slide to one side of his Volvo station wagon or he'd slow the car down to a roll and we'd all chant that we couldn't let the car stop and it would inch slowly forward at a stoplight. Although it was a sad reason to get together, I think he would be happy to know that the weekend was also a wonderful get together with family. Because it was fairly last minute, none of the kids flew over which meant us "adult cousins" were able to have long talks and linger over food. Kin and Meredith were able to host a summertime bbq at their house and we had a nice t

Japan trip

We got back from Japan about a week ago and we're still talking about what a great trip it was! Japan has never been super high on my places to visit but for a lot of reasons (I've never been, it's clean, it's safe, it's different) we took the plunge and booked it as our summer vacation this year. It helped that our friends, the Wongs, went last year, raved about it and loved it so much they were going again and we were able to coordinate so that some of our trip overlapped with theirs. It helped even more that the yen is at a 10-year low (maybe all time low?) against the dollar, which, aside from airfare, made everything quite affordable. Look how low the yen is! We lucked out that it kept falling after we booked our tix in Dec. Since this was our first big overseas trip since COVID and with kids (or, lets face it, SINCE kids), I dove into prepping for our trip - including trying to keep up my Duolingo streak of learning Japanese for at least a few minutes everyd

Miss Evie becomes a teenager

EEEK! We officially have a teenager in our house! I can't believe our little Evie is now 13 years old. I can still see her as a little girl saying "Swiper no swiping!" For her birthday this year, she and a few of the neighborhood girls went to get their nails done at the salon nearby. She doesn't remember the last time she got her nails professionally done ( back in 2016! ) so she was pretty excited about it. She picked a very pretty teal color. Afterwards, the girls had some cake. To celebrate her actual birthday, her ask was for tv time, shopping and sushi. So after a morning spent hanging out in from the tv, we headed to Bellevue Square mall where guess what? She got a phone! Technically, I got a new phone and handed down my old phone to her. We spent a good 3 hours doing all the transfers but she was very patient about it and grinning from ear to ear when we went to dinner that night. At 13, Evie has become a very stereotypical teenage girl - she loves clothes

Simpsons in Seattle

Search This Blog