Road trips have become a common activity in our family and one of our favorite games on road trips is plate bingo (or whatever it is called in your family.) We play cooperatively and we mark off each state’s plate that we see. On our trip to Yellowstone, we completed the whole set of 50 states plus a bunch in Canada and Mexico. We even saw a plate from Brazil!
We play on paper and it works just fine, but I was interested in trying to do it electronically. I flipped through the various apps for it but didn’t love any of them so with the power of agentic engineering, I built my own that is perfectly customized to my wishes. I’m going to skip posting the link here because I’m not really set up to service the entire internet if this page somehow gets popular, but feel free to text/email/whatever me and I’ll send you the link.
The interface is probably what you would expect. You get a big list of checkboxes for the US, Canada, and Mexico and as you check them, everything is synced to a central server so that everyone can see them. You can click into a state to see an example of the plate as well as facts about it. There’s a map view with your finds colored in, and you can upload a GPX file that overlays your route on the map along with a dot showing where you are now. At the end, you can generate a PDF report of the whole game showing some stats like the percentage of the country that you found by population and by area as well as a timeline of how many states you found per hour over your trip. In the back end I’m also keeping track of your location when you found a state with an idea to eventually come up with a “how hard is it to find state X based on your location” model.
Ultimately this whole thing could just be replaced with a single checkbox that says “Did you find West Virginia yet?” and in the unlikely event that you check that box, it says you win.
I’ve explained in previous posts how at some point, we decided to try to visit all Washington counties. The rules were pretty simple:
All three of us are together as a family
We are in our electric car
We at least drive into the county, but ideally, we find something fun to explore in the area
If we previously achieved these criteria before we decided to set this as a goal, those counties still count.
I have belatedly created a tag for some of these trips: wacounties.
After all our previous trips, there was only one more left and that was for the five counties in the very southeast corner of the state. If you’ve ever looked at a map, there’s not a lot there. It’s composed largely of dry rolling hills dotted with cows and farm equipment. While beautiful, it’s hard to come up with something to do instead of just drive through.
Further complicating this was the fact that there were no superchargers in that area. My only idea was to charge up extremely high in Pasco, WA and then try to touch all the counties on the shortest route possible up to Spokane to get to another charger. Another idea was to bank on non-Tesla chargers (or a campground, etc) but that makes me MUCH more nervous. So many non-Tesla chargers are broken that I didn’t relish the idea of being stuck in the middle of nowhere with a plug in my hand.
Thankfully in May of 2025, Tesla installed a new supercharger in Lewiston, ID! It was still a fairly long run, but it made things a lot more interesting.
We planned this as a 710-mile, overnight trip. On Saturday, we headed across Snoqualmie Pass, down through Yakima to Pasco. We charged there, had lunch, and headed east. Much of our route was along US-12. I have greatly enjoyed all the time we’ve spent on two lane roads as part of this adventure! The interstate is a good fast-forward, but the experience really gets better when we exit the interstate.
When we got to the final county, we stopped to take a photo by the sign.
Lewiston, ID and Clarkston, WA are right across the river from each other, and as you can guess from the name, Lewis and Clark came through there. We stopped at Hells Gate State Park in Idaho to visit the Lewis and Clark Discovery center and play a little disc golf. Then we had a delicious dinner at Roosters on the Snake River and then went back to our hotel. As always, we stayed at a Best Western Plus (not sponsored, but we should be at this point!) and it was probably the nicest one we’ve ever been to.
On Sunday we made the trek back on a slightly different route joining up with I-90 at Moses Lake. We sat in about 30 minutes of traffic for the decade long bridge replacement at Vantage. (I’m exaggerating the project length. Probably.)
As we got closer to Seattle, the traffic got heavier, the drivers got worse, and the rain started up. It was a bummer to think that the county exploration project was over, but I’m so glad we did it! Elijah keeps asking if we’ll try it when we move to Minnesota. We’ll at least keep track but there are so many more counties there that it will be a long process.
I don’t know how this started, but our family is trying to visit every county in Washington state. With our impending move next summer, we are trying to finish off the remaining counties soon. I divided them up into two trips, the first of which was an Olympic Peninsula tour. It was about 800 miles so we chopped it up into three days and did it over Memorial Day weekend.
Before we started, I added two doses of nerd to the trip:
I had GitHub Copilot create a nicely formatted HTML page with our itinerary on it and then I shared it with Tyla and Elijah so they could look at it during the trip. It had all our stops on it along with links to menus at restaurants. It also included the nice header image that you see in this post.
I used GitHub Copilot to build an app that lets me generate custom podcast. First it asks me how long I want the podcast to be. Then it researches a bunch of material about the topic and generates a two-speaker script. Then it renders that script into audio using my Azure subscription. Finally, it generates a podcast XML feed and uploads it all to my webserver. That gives us custom podcasts based on specific things that we’re going to see on our trip. It’s not as good as real humans but it’s fun to learn more about specific things we’re seeing.
Saturday
On Saturday, we left early to get in line for the Edmonds to Kingston ferry. We knew it would be very busy (and it was) but we got on comfortably to our target sailing. It’s a pretty quick ride across the Sound and then we made our way west to US 101. Our first stop was Forks, WA for lunch, but since we were doing good on time, I lengthened the trip a bit by taking SR 112 which follows much closer to the water. That road was wild! It had clearly been washed out in many different places and hastily repaired. The speed limit was slow but going any faster would probably destroy your vehicle anyway.
We ended up in Forks for lunch and I was happy to see that a lot of the Twilight-themed stuff had disappeared. There was still plenty of vampire tourism going on though. We charged the car and had lunch ate at the Longhouse Cafe. It’s an authentic Native American restaurant and everything they serve comes with or on Indian frybread. Delicious!
After that we continued on to our stop at the Hoh Rainforest Visitor Center in Olympic National Park. This is where we hit my big mistake in the itinerary. Visiting a national park on Memorial Day weekend? Duh. Huge line. We waited close to two hours to get through the entrance station, but thankfully we were in the Tesla so we weren’t stopping and starting our cars every few minutes like everyone else in line. We stamped Elijah’s National Park passport book at the Visitor Center and the rangers were very impressed with our idea to put a family photo next to each stamp. We hiked a few short trails but we didn’t stay long. Olympic National Park is a tough one to visit. It’s beautiful but it’s a huge area and each entrance is very far apart. So even though we’ve been to multiple parts of it, they’ve all been for short visits where we just see glimpses of the overall park.
From there we continued our trek down to Aberdeen, WA for our first hotel stay and we had dinner at Billy’s Bar & Grill which was also a winner.
Sunday
On Sunday, our first stop was the Historic Grays River Covered Bridge. It was built in the early 1900s and you can still drive your car across it today. I’ve never seen a covered bridge before so I was glad that there was basically no one around and we could spend our time looking at it.
From there we headed to Hood River by way of Jimmy John’s for lunch. For this stretch, we hopped back on the interstate and drove through Oregon. At Hood River we stopped for a round of disc golf and then had ice cream while watching the wind surfers. Then we took the toll bridge across the Columbia back into Washington to collect a few more counties on our way to Yakima.
We had perfect weather both Saturday and Sunday which gave us great views!
Monday
Our last day of the trip was just a ~2.5 hour drive back home, but since it was the Monday of Memorial Day weekend, we didn’t want to delay our start. We shot through Snoqualmie Pass before it clogged up and we were back home before lunch.
Summary
All in all it was just under 800 miles. A silly road trip like this would have been harder to justify at $6/gallon for gas, but the whole trip only cost us $87 in electricity. We stayed both nights in Best Western Plus’s (as usual) and got some discounts there from the rewards we’ve built up. Eating out was a big slice of the total cost and we could have cut that down by packing lunches like normal, but part of the fun was the food along the way.
Now we have one more trip planned to hit the remaining counties in southeast Washington.
Looking back through my 2025 posts in preparation for my “year in review” post, I realized that I never wrote about our rail riding trip in August!
For Tyla’s birthday adventure, we checked out Vance Creek Railriders. They have a stretch of tracks and custom built pedal powered train carts. Each cart can hold up to four people and you better be ready to pedal because it’s a workout!
The trip away from the home base goes pretty quickly because there are large stretches that are slightly downhill. We probably got going ~20-25 mph at points, but of course, all that fun downhill was just future work for us.
At the turnaround point, they had a special contraption for flipping the carts around while we had the option of visiting the port-a-potty.
Coming back was significantly harder, and it was made worse by the group towards the front that seemed to take pedaling as an optional part of the trip. It sort of was optional because the cart in the back had a small engine on it, but there was no way it could push the dozen or so carts up the hills so we all still had to pedal.
I don’t think any of us are itching to do this every weekend, but it was definitely a fun experience that we’re all glad we tried.
My parents flew out to visit recently and we decided to take a trip with them to Mazama, WA. Mazama is on the east side of the Hwy 20 pass that goes through North Cascades National Park. I did a motorcycle ride through there in 2009 and I’ve been wanting to go back ever since.
We left Monday morning and took the route through Darrington. We stopped at Pressentin Park in Marblemount for a quick picnic lunch and then continued on our way.
Our next stop was the North Cascades Visitor Center but it was closed for some combination of it being the end of the season and the government shutdown. So we continued on to Ladder Creek Falls just a little farther down the road. There’s a suspension bridge over the river and then a steep climb up to see the falls. There are some interesting signs along the way explaining the history of the park and the effect of electrification from the dam.
We hopped back in the truck and pulled off at Diablo Lake. We had sunshine for most of the drive up to this point but it started getting a bit cloudier. The lake didn’t quite have its famous green color, but it’s still a beautiful view. We also stopped a little bit up the road at the Ross Lake overlook.
I had hoped that our next stop would be the trail to Rainy Lake but even though it was the middle of October, there was a foot of fresh snow! That would have made the hike too difficult for us anyway, but we also arrived in early afternoon and parking along the trailhead was a zoo. So we continued on to the Washington Pass Observation Site. The parking lot wasn’t plowed and there were quite a few cars there already, but we found a parking spot and despite not having good shoes for walking in snow, we made our way down the packed snow trail. The wet feet were worth it. It’s already and amazing view and it was magnified by all the fresh snow. If you’ve never driven through this pass, I highly recommend it! It’s my favorite of the Washington passes through the Cascades, and the addition of fall colors was incredible.
From there we headed down the east side of the mountain to our Airbnb just past Mazama. We filled our days with a lot of food cooked at the house, two short hikes, exploring the western themed town of Winthrop, visiting the Shafer Historical Museum, and playing a lot of games at the house. The weather was cool but the sunny skies gave us beautiful views.
For the drive home, we took the slightly longer route east to Hwy 97 and then south to catch SR 2 west across Stevens Pass. We had to stop in Leavenworth for brats at Munchen Haus and fudge from the Fudge Hut.
That’s a lot of miles to cover with three people in the back seat and I appreciate everyone being willing to do this trip! It’s a gorgeous area and while Winthrop is still touristy, there’s a lot fewer people around and the whole area feels a lot more peaceful. It would be fun to go back there again and use that house as a base camp for a bunch of day hikes in the mountains!
About a year and a half ago, Tyla and I were trying to figure out how to work in a visit to Martin Luther College. Since then, I have been there FOUR TIMES. We had no idea that we’d be asked to be on the President’s Advisory Council or that I’d end up going to synod convention.
Tyla and I just got back from our latest trip. Elijah stayed home this time (thanks Megan!) and we got a weekend to ourselves. Visiting Minnesota in late September is a roll of the dice but we had beautiful weather with temps around 80.
Our meetings were wonderful. I feel like our group is really hitting its stride now that we have more context about the challenges that are being faced and the type of feedback that is helpful. Plus, now that we know more people, even our time outside of the meetings leads to valuable conversations whether we’re having dinner or watching a volleyball game. We also got to say hi to a couple friendly faces among the student body too.
Outside of the meetings, we did get a chance to watch two volleyball games and we toured Schell’s Brewery too. The Schell’s tour was rich on history. They have a lot to cover since the brewery has been around since 1860! In the picture below you can see that we got to visit their cave where they barrel age a special fall brew.
Thanks again to MLC for hosting us and we look forward to our next visit!
(Note: You should be able to click on any of the photos in this post for a bigger view.)
Our main vacation this summer was a road trip to Yellowstone! We have been putting this off largely because of the horror stories about overcrowding, but we decided it’s not like the crowds are going to get lighter so let’s just go for it. I’m glad we did!
It’s about 750 miles from our house to the West Yellowstone entrance so we did the drive in two days. The first night’s stop was in Butte which left us with a fairly short drive the next day so we stopped in Bozeman to spend the day with some friends that we haven’t seen in a long time. They planned a nice hike for us and a picnic lunch. It was a great way catch up, let the kids run, and enjoy our time together.
Later that day we made our way down to West Yellowstone, MT. Our Airbnb was just west of town in Island Park, ID so that meant every day we started in Idaho, crossed Montana, and spent the day in Wyoming before reversing course back to the rental house.
Yellowstone is enormous. It’s bigger than Connecticut and Delaware combined. Planning a trip into an area that big is a lot of work, but after our success in Arches and Canyonlands National Parks, we again turned to dirtinmyshoes.com for this trip. We used the 4-day itinerary for Yellowstone and it was fantastic! It’s ridiculous to say we saw the whole park in 4 days, but we certainly saw a huge percentage of what most people see when they go there. You could spend a lifetime exploring all the trails, but I don’t feel like we missed anything and I don’t know what we would have tried to see if we had another day. Aside from the luxury of not having to research and plan, we also avoided almost all the crowds! There was only one time that I had to circle a parking lot for a bit, and there were many times where we arrived to be the only car in the lot or it was less than 20% full. This made our trip so much more enjoyable! The park very rarely felt crowded for us, but as we’d drive back past places we had already visited, the crowds were obvious. You could easily have a miserable time if you were visiting things at the wrong time. In fairness, we did start our days very early. One day we were in the park before 6:15 and I think the latest we entered the park was 7:30. That’s a big help, but the itinerary was also critical for seeing things in the right order to avoid the hordes.
Going into the park, I knew about Old Faithful and bison, but I didn’t really have an appreciation for the diversity of the landscape. You could divide many of our experiences into three categories: geothermal, wildlife, and water.
Geothermal: Old Faithful is of course the most popular geothermal feature but there are so many more in clusters around the park. I’m glad we saw Old Faithful, but other areas were similarly (or more) impressive. I really enjoyed the Norris Geyser basin. There wasn’t any one particular feature that stood out, but there are some really amazing views of the whole basin steaming. The land formations up by Mammoth Hot Springs were also really bonkers to see.
Wildlife: While we saw animals every day, day 3 was our big animal day. We saw fields with hundreds (thousands?) of bison, bison on the road in front of our truck, grizzly bears, black bears, elk, bighorn sheep, and pronghorn. (On a previous day we also saw a fox.) The highlight of that day for me was getting to our main trailhead for the day and having it swarmed with people. We quickly figured out how to predict what kind of animal was around by how many cars were there and this was a “bear crowd.” Indeed, there were two bears very far off in the distance, barely visible to the naked eye. Guides with spotting scopes indicated it was a grizzly and a baby. After the crowd dissipated, we ended up doing our hike anyway even though it took us directly closer to the bears. We stopped periodically to look at them through our binoculars and ensure that they weren’t getting any closer. They were probably a couple miles away and there was a river crossing between us, but we did stop our hike a little short of our final destination just to be extra safe. On top of the ones we could see, there were also strong warnings about bear activity in the area. Two bison had duked it out the previous week with one of them dying. Rangers had moved the carcass away from the road and that carcass turned into a feeding ground for a lot of animals. All that was left when we went by were part of the spine and the skull. I always carried bear spray.
Water: Yellowstone River starts from an enormous and beautiful lake and the plummets down two waterfalls in rapid succession as it dives into the “Grand Canyon of Yellowstone.” We spent one morning viewing the falls from four or five different spots. The Lower Falls are especially beautiful in the early morning light. Later in the day we stopped for a picnic lunch along Yellowstone River. After carefully stowing our food back in the truck so as not to attract animals, we went back for a stroll along the river. We were all taking our own path when suddenly Elijah and Tyla noticed that we were walking right past a sleeping bison! Tyla and Elijah were able to turn around and walk back but I had already gone past it. There weren’t a lot of good options for getting around it so I just went back the way I came and thankfully it just stayed where it was. You can make your own estimate from the picture below but I’d say we were within 30-40 feet. It may not look like much from the picture, but it’s another thing being there with them. They are huge and unbelievable fast and nimble. I felt pretty bad about this one because I had spent the whole trip trying to be the first one to spot any animal when we were out since I knew there were some nerves in the family. But in this instance, I got distracted looking at the river and watching my step to not sprain an ankle on the rocks. I’m thankful it didn’t turn into one of those “look what the stupid people did in Yellowstone” situations.
We just got a new Canon R8 within the last year so I took that along each day. It was reasonable to carry with the 28-75mm lens but on our animal day, I took the monster 70-200 lens. On the one hand, it feels silly to take pictures in Yellowstone when there are so many better ones available online. But on the other hand, it’s really fun to have pictures that line up exactly with our memories. I tried to take a lot of photos with Tyla and/or Elijah in them, but I still took a lot of scenery pictures too. One of them got printed to poster size and another one at 8×10. Both are hanging on our walls at home.
As a packing reminder for our next trip, we did have some binoculars along but I wish we had another set or maybe even a nicer set. We used them a LOT. For Yellowstone in particular, it also would have been fun to bring our infrared thermometer along to see how hot some of the features were.
Booking a trip anywhere in the western US in the late summer is a gamble. Beyond the normal questions about heat and rain, there’s a good chance that you’ll at least have enough smoke to mess up the views or at worst, there’s enough smoke that you don’t even want to be outside. We were incredibly blessed on all fronts with the weather. It was cool in the mornings, warm in the afternoons, and we had nearly perfect air quality. There were some sprinkles while we were visiting Old Faithful but that was perfect timing if it had to happen. On our first day as we were driving back to the rental house, Elijah pointed off to the horizon and said, “What’s that?” It was a brand new fire starting! Not only did I have to think about whether we might need to evacuate or how we would know, but I wondered what we’d find the next morning. Despite the fire growing, it was never a danger to us and amazingly the smoke never impacted us in the park! Shortly after we left, the weather deteriorated and there was a lot more smoke. We could not have asked for better timing.
Whenever we do a trip like this, we like to play the license plate game. Elijah used to be our scribe and he would mark things off on the sheet. Now that job has transitioned to Tyla which means I have to keep a list in my head and then report them to her when she wakes up. Ha! Visiting a national park somewhat in the middle of the country is a great place to polish off whatever was missed on the drive, but unfortunately Delaware and West Virginia eluded us. The highlight of that game was on our last day in the park as we were driving back to the exit. We had been following a motorcycle with a license plate that we couldn’t quite read. I didn’t want to get too close but when we arrived at one of the few stop signs in the park, we were able to pull up close enough to read that it was from Brazil! Then to top it off, the truck coming the other way had a New Hampshire plate. That was the 48th and final US plate that we saw.
Our days in the park were long. As I mentioned, we started early and most days we got home around 4:30-5pm. The park is enormous so there was a lot of time spent just driving around. I estimate that we averaged around 150 miles per day of driving in the park and about 5-6 miles of walking. I definitely felt like we pushed the border of making good use of our time and wearing ourselves out. We basically did nothing at the rental house except eat, get prepared for the next day, and then sleep. Yet it never felt like we were killing ourselves to see too much stuff.
For food we generally ate oatmeal or eggs at the house and then packed a lunch. Before we leave home, we bought a summer sausage and a block of cheese and that felt like the Widow of Zarapheth from 1 Kings 17 because that summer sausage and cheese somehow fed Tyla and I nearly every day of our trip! Elijah usually had a PB&J or some tuna fish and crackers. We kept a cooler with ice in the back of the truck for the whole trip and it was a great way to have lunch wherever was convenient and always have a good supply of cold water. Before the trip I bought some silicone freezer trays and every night at the rental house, I was able to make enough ice for the cooler that I didn’t have to buy any from the stores in West Yellowstone. But we do have a couple favorite restaurants to recommend too:
Ernie’s Bakery and Deli – We stopped here twice. The first was on our way into the park right when they opened around 7am. They sell boxed lunches which seemed like a brilliant idea! You pick your own sandwich fixings and then they pile in chips, an apple, candy, a drink, and more. We also stopped there for a delicious breakfast as we left town.
TR’s Burgers – The whole restaurant is themed with Teddy Roosevelt trivia and photos which is fun, but the burgers are fantastic! They had a nice selection of craft beer as well and you can choose either outdoor or indoor seating.
We piled all our stuff in the truck, said good bye to our rental house, and took a slightly longer route out of town to avoid the fire activity. We weren’t quite heading home yet though as we had planned a two day stop at Silverwood Theme Park in northern Idaho. It has been on our list for a long time and this seemed like a reasonable time to give it a shot. We almost canceled it though because the forecast was for 97 degree weather both days! I’m glad we didn’t cancel though because amazingly the heat never really bothered us too much. We were able to stay cool enough and not get too worn out from the heat. Silverwood is a decent sized theme park with the main draws being 5 big roller coasters and a large water park. Elijah was determined to do his first looping coaster but unfortunately the entry level looping coaster was closed both days we were there. I did the next most intense one and knew that it was asking a bit much from him to try that (though I loved it. Definitely try out Stunt Pilot!) The water park ended up being the bigger hit for the family and we did most of the rides there. I’m glad we got to do Silverwood but it was a bit of a shock after the peaceful beauty of Yellowstone. We don’t have many pictures since we mostly left our phones in a locker.
I was really looking forward to this trip and it did not disappoint. A road trip to a National Park is almost always a winner for me and I’m thankful that Tyla and Elijah enjoy them too. I know as a kid I wasn’t always the easiest to travel with on that kind of a trip, but now every time Tyla and I discuss what we want to do for our next trip, I always have a National Park on the list of choices.
Along with photos, we were taking some video too, so I edited it together into a montage for us to look back on and smile.
The church I attend is part of a national church body called the Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod. Why? There are things that are difficult for individual churches to do such as sending out missionaries and training new pastors, teachers, and staff ministers. So we band together to do those kinds of projects as well help keep each other teaching directly what the Bible says. Every two years, the synod holds a convention with delegates from around the country to review our current status and make plans for the future.
This is the 175th anniversary of our synod. It started so small and there were many times where we were on the verge of heading down a bad path, but ultimately, our truth did not bend around popular culture and our beliefs have remained consistent regardless of what is trending.
From that humble beginning we have now spread out around the world. I was on a committee that was focused on gathering information from our mission board so I got extra insight into the amazing work being done around the world. The international Christian community is exploding in places you might expect, but also in places that would shock you. (Some of those places can’t be reported since it would put lives in danger.) Inside the US, we are working to plant 100 new missions within 10 years and also to strengthen/restart 75 of our existing ministries. We’re two years into that plan and it’s going well, but as costs rise, it makes the work more challenging. Regardless of where the missionaries were located, they had incredible stories to share about how the gospel works in individual hearts.
The convention was held in New Ulm, MN at Martin Luther College. That’s the same place Tyla and I have been visiting to work with their leadership on some ideas. It’s a special place because every one of our pastors, teachers, and staff ministers goes through that school and receives the same solid, doctrinal education. (Pastors continue on for another four years at seminary.) It’s fun being there when the students are on campus, but it was also interesting this time to be there with ~400 other delegates. Many extra people came to the opening worship service and it was a treat to hear 800 people singing together. Breaks and meals were full of interesting conversations and when meetings finally ended late in the evenings, there was social time with drinks from Schell’s Brewing. The cool beer was a welcome freshment because it was in the low to mid 90s with extreme humidity. I was so thankful that I skipped the free lodging in the dorms and got a room at a hotel. The AC (and privacy) were very welcome.
It was a little weird being on campus without Tyla, but she and I will be back there in a couple months for another meeting. I did enjoy seeing familiar faces from the campus staff and meeting new ones as well. I got a tour of some of their tech services too and hope to continue that conversation in the future.
It was four very long days but I’m so happy that I could attend. Since we have so many churches and there are so few delegates, it’s a rare opportunity that a church gets to send someone. This could very well have been a once in a lifetime opportunity for me, but the memories of this convention will last that long.
If you want to dive in deeper, all of the materials and live streams are available at https://www.welsconvention.net. A couple of their photos are included below.
I’m thankful for how often we get back to Indiana given how far away we live. Summer is a fun time for us to visit since Dad and Mom have a pool and that is a big hit with the family.
Our trip this year included:
A visit to the South Bend Chocolate Factory where Elijah got to chat with the owner who gave him a free shark tooth from their dinosaur museum.
A walk along the St. Joseph River in the evening to see their light display.
For many years, we have gone on a summer camping trip with Tyla’s family and the tradition continued this year. I don’t think most of us had heard of Ike Kinswa State Park before but we decided to give it a shot. It’s located northwest of Mt. St. Helens and southwest of Mt. Rainier.
We arrived on a Saturday and left on a Tuesday to try to avoid some traffic, and the traffic part worked well but it made booking difficult. State parks book up extremely quickly so you need to jump online right at 7am, 9 months in advance of the first day of your trip. Since our trip started Saturday, that meant that all the Thursday and Friday campers got first dibs. Thankfully we still found a couple pretty nice sites close together.
The park itself was nice. It sits on a reservoir behind one of two dams on the Cowlitz River. We spent Sunday driving around to explore the dams and play disc golf. On Monday we went up to Paradise Visitor Center on the south side of Rainer. Some of us took a short (but steep) hike up to Alta Vista. The trail almost had too much snow for us to make it but we did get to the top of the crest. The weather was perfectly clear and it was fun to point out the hikers going up to Camp Muir. I would love to do that hike with Elijah sometime.
All in all, it was a great trip. I dont’ know that we’ve had many trips with nicer weather. It was in the low to mid 80s during the day and cool enough at night to sleep easily. Thanks to Don and crew for getting the camper ready for this one trip each year and then putting it away again! It makes it a lot easier to do all the cooking and cleaning from the trailer.
Now we have a couple months before it’s time to figure out where to go next year…
