When I and my girl friend have nothing much to do in Seattle, we go hiking. She always wanted to go to Mount Rainier which I haven’t been to before. On the morning that we went for Mount Rainier, I had booked a rental car in the early morning at 7AM and told her that we’re going to Mount Rainier. We’re completely random and unprepared when making travel decisions. We’re fortunate that every random trip we take was memorable and fun.

Since we wanted to workout and were short of time, we ran to the Budget rental office after running in the Elliott Bay Park in the Seattle Downtown Area; we wanted to leave Seattle by 10AM the latest.

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We ended up leaving Seattle at around 11AM. The only map I had was the Google Maps on my iPhone. We weren’t sure which should have been our destination since there were about 10 choices that Google Maps gave us for Mount Rainier. We just picked a random one; we figured we can find our way once we get around the area. While heading towards the Southern path of the mountain, we made a pit stop at <> to get some lunch. There were 4 or 5 buildings and realized it was a miner town.

<< Google Maps >>

There were not many choices and the choice was obvious: There were a pizza place which was closed, and a pub which was open. Inside the pub was very dark contrasting the bright outdoors. It was so bright such that staring at the entrance door from the inside was as if I was staring at a wall of white fluorescent light. The pub had two segmented areas: the pub and the restaurant. We sat at the pub area just because it was near the bartender to whom we can easily order; we thought the waitress wouldn’t visit the restaurant area often. We wanted to have a quick bite and go on our way so without much thought I ordered the taco specials and my girlfriend a tuna melt sandwich.

The portion of the food was as big as the one which anyone would expect in Cheesecake Factory, for example. I would recommend that place if you have no where else to go in the area; there’s no other choices near the area anyway. We were doubting our Google map path so we asked the waitress at the pub. She suggested that we take the Northern route instead of continuing on the Southern route; she said the view is better.

Here’s picture of the town’s town hall.

On our way with a new path, we stopped by the mud river. The edge of the river was completely in mud of which density was dense enough to support our body weight when we stepped on them.

When we arrived at the entrace of Mount Rainier at which we paid the $5 entrance fee. While waiting for each other in a wee break, we took a look at the list of the trails and their descriptions. After considering a few choices, we decided to get to the Mount Fremount Lookout Trail.

The most of the trail was very rocky. It took us about 2 hours to reach the lookout but the view from there was beautiful.

This is the reservoir from the glacier.