Our time in Seattle was too short. We really loved our stay at Tolt-MacDonald, but with an outdoor festival planned and our reservation up, it was time to move on to Mount Rainier National Park! After a short 2-3 hour drive, we made it to our destination – Silver Springs Campground. Silver Springs is a gorgeous campground with fairly generous sites along a large river nearby and a spring-fed creek bubbling up throughout the campground. Mount Rainier is a huge national park, which meant no matter where we camped it was going to be a drive to get to the main attractions.
Our first day, I wanted to knock off the most well-known trail in the park: the Skyline Trail. We made the one hour drive to the Paradise Visitor Center. We like to get on the trails as early as possible to beat the crowds. That was definitely a good call here as even though we were early, there were still quite a few people out on the trails. The Skyline Trail gets you fairly close to Mt Rainier (the only way to get closer to the summit would be to actually hike to the base camp for it). The loop is around 5 miles with 1,500′ of elevation, and the views are jaw-dropping throughout.
We took it easy at the park over the weekend with Mozzie girl. She couldn’t come on any of the trails with us in the NP, but she was content with walks around camp and some frisbee sessions at one of the closed sections of the campground.
Our last day in Rainier, we decided to squeeze in one more of the popular hikes – Mount Fremont! This was an absolutely fantastic hike. It was around 6 miles round trip with 1,000′ of elevation gain. It wanders along a ridge with a great view of Mt. Rainier and then dips around another high point to reach to Fremont Fire Tower Lookout. The 360 degrees views from the fire tower were spectacular!
After our time at Mt. Rainier, we had a few smaller stays connecting our trip to Olympic National Park. First, we stayed 3 nights at a casino’s RV sites in Suquamish, WA. It was a pretty terrible stay, but we had full hookups for a decent price. We took the time to do some exploring and hiking in the area. Next was 2 nights at Kitsap Memorial State Park. It was a pretty park, but really seemed to be suited to their bayside wedding venue.
We had a good time at Mt. Rainier and a decent time resupplying and getting ready for our last destination in Washington. Next up is our stay in Olympic National Park.
-Kyle & Andrea