Our vacation today takes us to Mount Rainier National Park in southern Washington. This was to be a relatively easy national park destination as we didn’t have a long drive from Seattle to get there. We didn’t have a campsite planned, but knew we were planning on staying at Cougar Rock campground inside the national park, as they are a first-come, first-served area until the 21st of June. We were also only staying one night in Mount Rainier, to keep with our schedule.

We arrived at Mount Rainier, easily got a campsite, and were off to explore the park. Scott wanted to do a hike to a waterfall called Comet Falls. According to our national parks book, this was a 5 mile round trip hike to a waterfall and back. We knew there would be some elevation gain, but didn’t anticipate how difficult the hike would be! We traversed hills, boulders, a stream, a wooden staircase, and a huge amount of elevation. However, it was 100% completely worth it. (I joked with Scott that this was his payback for me making him hike to Akupuni Falls in Glacier National Park, which was a pretty difficult hike as well). Check out these pictures of the falls! We were able to almost get to the bottom of the falls- I’m sure we could have gotten there if we had really wanted to.

 

We hiked back down the mountain, seeing Christine Falls at the bottom by the Trail head. We then took off toward the visitor center to check it out and get even closer to the summit of Mount Rainier. If you ever get the chance, Mount Rainier is definitely someplace you should stop at. The mountain is indescribably beautiful. Scott and I have hopes to come back to visit and hike the Wonderland trail- a 93 mile hike around the entire base of the mountain! Lofty goals, but something I could foresee us doing!

 

Just as an update for everyone, here is our National Parks map to show our progress of seeing all the national parks together! I love watching this map fill up and having these memories together!