Day 30, Goodbye Olympic National Park

Day 30 was the best weather day since we have been in Washington State. We left the Ocean Side Resort

that had been our home for the last three nights in search of Mt. St. Helens and Mt. Rainier. Babs & I had been to the Mt. St. Helens visitor center with my cousins Frank & Kitty Spadaro two years earlier. So we would know the way, right? No not, us. We didn’t bother to consult the AAA’s guide and forged our own route right up WA25 which would take one to the top of Mt. St. Helens…..if it were not closed because of snow. No bother we’ll just turn onto WA99 and take it to the top….if it weren’t closed because of snow. Once again we spent two and a half hours back tracking. Sounds like something we’ve done before. WA25 is a narrow winding roughly paved road with loads of damage. At one point a landslide

took out the road and they used a one lane temporary bridge to span the gap of the missing road.
So off to Mt. Rainier we head. A couple of hours later we enter the Mt. Rainier National Park. On the way up to the Paradise Visitors Center we stopped to view this gorge.

Once at the top, there is still tons of snow. The ranger said that this is the most snow that they have had in years. The snow behind Katy and Jason is over 25 feet deep.

There was a large land (snow & ice) slide the day before we were there. You may be able to see the dirty snow where the slide occurred.
We checked into our Best western hotel and went to dinner at the Powerhouse Restaurant and Ale House which was in a converted power generating sub-station. When the train went by, electricity was generated and sparks went up a Jacob’s latter. I had Greek Pizza, Katy had some kind of Thai pasta, Babs had smoked salmon penne, and Jason had “fire” pasta. I tasted Jason’s pasta and rated it to hot for human consumption. Jason loved it!

Tomorrows is an easy day, with a tour of Boeing’s assembly plant, and have Katy and Jason to the airport in time for their flight.

Bays Says:
Days 1-5: Hurry to get in the room and get started. So excited to be doing this!
Days 6-20: Still fun, but losing some enthusiasm as the days go by.
Days 21-25: Taking longer and longer to complete and sometime have to put off until morning to finish.
Days 26-29: Not fun anymore. Doing it out of a sense of duty.
Day 30: Oh, no I can’t keep it up.
This is a month in a life of a blogger.

P.S. Not Frank’s thoughts!