Day Thirteen
Mount Rainier
This is our second day at Mount Rainier, and we want to take advantage of all that the park offers and we have not seen. As I said, this was our 5th visit to the park and we had seen most things from the road and this two day+ visit would give us an opportunity to do some other things besides driving through (like some of our visits to other NPS places on this trip and others). But that is the advantage to having been here. We knew it was a place that required more than one day and was well worth a return trip. The park is squarly set up with Mount Rainier being the center peice. It is surounded by millions of acres of wilderness. From the lower elevation old growth forests found at the south west and south east entrances, the road that crosses the southern portion of the park rises to the sub-alpine level at Paradise. Near the South east corner, a road heads north across the park on its eastern side. Besides a few other small spurs, these are the only roads in the park.
 Our plan today is to visit the Sunrise area. Its an area much like Paradise, but it is located on the eastern side of the mountain instead of the southern side. At Sunrise, we attempted to hike to the Berkely Park area, but we stopped at the crest at the top of the Wonderland trail, just shy of reaching that point. We decided to hike back to the visitor center via a trail that ran on ridge parallel to the one we had taken, but one that would offer tremendous views of the Cascades and Mt Rainier. We returned to the Sunrise visitor center and then made a small hike to an alpine lake.
Late in the afternoon we needed to get some gas so we would have enough to travel back east to Boise tommorrow. The only problem with Mount Rainier is the lack of nearby gas stations. There are no service stations in the park, and the one station outside of the western entrance sold gas for a good .20 more than they should have. The only was to save any money is to travel about 50 miles from Paradise to, if you can believe this, the southern suburbs of Seattle! The distance from Paradise to the nearest gas station is about 20 miles. If you don't want to pay their prices, you can travel further down the road, but you won't encounter another station for about 20-30 miles. Its just the way it is! So, fuel up before you enter the park.
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