Nearly Heaven, August 7, 2015

It was another get up bright and early and travel until the wee hours of the day kinda day. We saw Mount Rainier and had to drag ourselves away to get to the next destination. What an amazing mountain. We had binoculars with us and someone pointed out the hikers going up the glacier. They were the size of ants but we could make out their snow trail. We had to be as close to Heaven as we've ever been before.

It was another day of taking pictures on the approach only to keep out doing each shot. We'd constantly be craning around in our seats looking for the mountain. The contrast in all the colors of green was beautiful. The deep hunter green was nearly black. The pencil thin pines that were bare of branches on one side and thick on the other were quite intriguing.

The glaciers on the mountain just didn't look real. We're going to have to find a documentary on Rainier and watch it. It's truly a majestic place. We didn't see a single critter though. Tony loves wild critters. It's a big park and full of beauty. We walked out to a water fall and it was a much longer hike than we expected. Jennifer saw a snake (well I guess we saw one wild critter), and I had to hold Tony back from picking it up and playing with it. He went after it for sure!

We finally realized we had to get out of there to head for Seattle. We drove right to the space needle and parked. It was a two and a half hour delay until we could go up or we could buy a blast pass to go right up. Of course that was the more pricey option. Because of the 2.5 hour trip North we had to take for the night for the next day's activities, we spent the additional money. The view from above was amazing.

Seattle is a very pretty and vibrant city. It wasn't as busy as I expected down by the space needle, but then again it was Friday night. I'd say Saturday is busier. . It's a really neat area of entertainment and businesses. It's also very clean and safe. There was an outdoor concert going on that was playing groovy hip music. Again, no one wanted to leave.

Because we've had so many problems finding places to stay, I had made a reservation at a park outside Olympic Park north of Seattle. All day long I kept reminding everyone of the time necessary to get there. No one wanted to listen. We are still on the road to the hotel at 11:30. We're not due in until 12:10. Another super long day. 

Tomorrow morning we see Olympic Park. We have decided to sleep in - a whopping 8:00. We have some hard decisions tomorrow because the park is 454 miles round trip. We'll have about 7 hours to see it. We made reservations for the ferry and another hotel  further North for sea kayaking for tomorrow night. Looks like I'll be vacation Nazi tomorrow, too.

The crazy train vacation won out even though I begged for a single park and some relaxation. But as Tony says, we can sleep when we're dead. At this chaotic rate, that may not be far off! We've put 2200 miles on the rental in 4 days. And don't forget the 1500 from Fancy Gap to Denver. Right now we've stayed on track with the spreadsheet I created. That's all going to have to change somehow in the next few days. We're running out of days and have to go back to Denver. We'll deal with that later. Right now, all we can think about is some sleep for tonight. Soon...