Rainy Sunday Photo Memories

Waking up in my own bed today, listening to the rain on the roof was absolute heaven.  Especially since Friday night involved sleeping three hours on an airplane and another two hours on the floor at the  Cleveland airport. Today will be a day of unpacking from our trip to the Pacific Northwest, laundry, grocery shopping, and reliving the trip through our photos.  We put over a thousand miles on the rental car and managed to hit the top spots on everyone’s wish list for sights…

Mount St. Helens from the Johnston Ridge Observatory

I was ten when Mount St. Helens erupted and remember saving my money for weeks to buy a big book about the eruption at our local bookstore. The photos in the book were great; in person, the mountain is absolutely spectacular.


If you stand amid these trees very quietly and listen, you can hear elk bugling.

The Quinault Rainforest is a mossy, magical place with enormous spruce and maple trees and fabulous giant slugs.


(E just walked into the room and said, “Hey! What’s my hand doing on your blog?”)

From the rainforest, we headed to Pacific Beach State Park.

But my favorite experience of the trip was our hike from the Paradise Visitor Center at Mount Rainier National Park.  On the way there, I told the kids, “We might even be able to hike on a little snow if we climb high enough.”   It was the understatement of the trip.  Here’s the family, at the beginning of our 2.5 mile hike…

With record snowfall this year, the meadows and trails were still under 4-8 feet of snow.  On the trail to Glacier Vista, though, we still managed to find some wildflowers emerging where the snow had melted.

It took us over an hour to climb to this viewpoint.  Getting down was much faster.

Who knew that sledding without a sled could be so much fun?

28 Replies on “Rainy Sunday Photo Memories

  1. great photos

    I went to/near Mt St Helens in the min 80’s

    I was amazed at the the devestation and the miles and miles of seedlings — each one surrounded with a chicke -wire type fence.

    Looks like you all had a FUN! trip.

  2. I would’ve been there looking at it really close, saying “Ew” and NOT touching it. 🙂 I am fascinated from afar. Like how I was staring at the huge snail on my sidewalk today, shuddering at the thought of touching it while being completely fascinated by it.

    I know, I’m a total wimp. 🙂

  3. Kate, your pictures are amazing (as I’ve come to expect)… The first and sixth are especially breathtakingly beautiful. And the last one is very entertaining!

  4. I’m not a creepy-crawly sort of guy, which is rather embarassing when my 3 y.o. daughter picks worms out of the dirt and rolls them around between her fingers.