The Mount Rainier National Park is a couple of hundred kilometers south of Seattle. The drive out there ran the gauntlet of some of the ugliest strip malls (worthy of New Jersey) leading rapidly to a gorgeous natural setting. In America, Paradise is easy to get to, and comes with a view point.
I would have liked to climb the mountain, but it requires the kind of experience with crampons and ice picks I don't have, and the organized trips had been booked out months in advance. So I spent a couple of days hiking around the tree zone and back again. Thursday I got up really early and saw a large number of animals, one after the other: coyote, deer, squirrel and beavers.
I hiked a lot through alpine meadows, but I also climbed up above the tree line where the snow bridges were all melting.
I left Mount Rainier really early in the morning (got up before dawn) and got these images in the Reflecting Lake at the base in the morning light.
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