It was around noon so we probably sat in line for about an hour. Man that 4th of July traffic makes the day a lot longer. As we were entering the park, we had to stop for out customary picture with the sign. Our first stop was at Longmire for information. Even though it was another 15 miles inside the park, we let the ranger talk us into driving to Paradise. Wow, are we glad we did!

Our next stop was a Christine falls (video). This was probably the coolest waterfall I have ever seen that I was able to get close to. It was a beautiful falls that you couldn’t really appreciate fully from the road. Next was the Narada falls which was a short hike downhill to a large beautiful falls. We were close enough to get the mist. A few pics and back up the trail we went.

We arrived into Paradise… more traffic, and visited with another park ranger.. We bought our more medallions for our hiking sticks, bought some additional gifts, and then grabbed a quick bit to eat. The first trail recommended to us was the Myrtle Falls Trail (video). It was a neat waterfall, but the two previous ones were better, I thought. Thee amazing thing about this trail was the surroundings. Heather said it best “it’s like we’re all in the middle of a picture. Check out the pics below… very cool stuff.

We then went on the Nisqally Glacier Trail. There was snow blocking a lot of the path…. IN JULY. We read about how much water the glacier loses arch year. The sights were once again amazing. Too bad we got stuck in so much traffic because we would have liked to do more of the trails. Even though the drive yesterday was too long, Mt Rainier was definitely worth it!

After we wore ourselves out hiking, we drove the 90 minutes to Seattle, dropped the vehicle off, and turned in for the evening. Tomorrow we are traveling by light rail only.