First Sighting

Beautiful mountain meadows. Walk on them and they'll shoot you, haha.

Dinner.

Rainier

Dinner, again

Camping style

First night, walking in

Lookit the GREEN!

"Repairs"

What exactly does 'meadow repairs' mean? Do they shore it up with a 2x4? Plaster it? Waterproof it?

Ice in the morning

Yes, Sept. 4th and there is frost on the ground.

Kissed by ice

Where is Theodore?

Ah hah!

Theodore was soon followed by his second cousin, Dolores, and her step sister Tina.

Shadow lake in the morning sun

We made the mistake of walking on the frozen ground with our Five Fingers. Halfway around the lake my toes were completely numb.

Shadow Bear

Sun Bear!

Breakfast in the sun! Homemade almond butter on rice cakes with dried peaches and apples. Mmmm.

Wee Tree

Lookit how tiny it is!

Froggie

In the near-freezing water. He was pretending he was invisible.

Shadow Lake

Shadow Lake w/Rainier

Pasqueflower blossom

We called it a Moppet.

From Lookout point: Panoramic

From Lookout point: Panoramic

From Lookout point: Panoramic

Ziiiiii-ooooon....

From Lookout point: Panoramic

From Lookout point: Panoramic

Bird!

Getting closer....

Walk, birdie, walk!

At this point I could have had roast fowl for dinner. I declined.

Backwards pinecones

The intrepid explorer

The tired explorer

A 5 mile morning hike soon to be followed by a few more miles to our next site.

Frozen lake

Yes, that is a wee glacier

Asian alert!!

Close side of Rainier

That just might be Mount Ruth over there...I'm not kiddin!

Flowers

Cliff Paintbrush and Broad Leaf Lupine

Aren't they pretty? Now imagine this as far as you can see. Yes.

Berkeley Park

Our first sight of the flower-strewn lush valley

Somewhere in here are bears.

Rushing stream

Flowers!

....and a hiker.

Our fav stream

Almost like it was out of 'Everyone Wishes this was their garden' magazine.

Mountain Bog Genetian

Lewis Monkeyflower

Broad-leaf Lupine

looks like Canby's Lovage

Up on those rocky cliffs mountain goats live

Perhaps a heather?

Lupine everywhere

Marmot!

Lucky fella. All this good eats and no big birds to eat him!

Fav stream, evening

Sunset in Berkeley

Looking towards Rainier

Sunset in Berkeley

Breakfast on a log

The only way to cook

Our humble home

No bugs allowed

Cold!

Passing through Berkeley to Grand Park

SO pretty

Mossy rocks & a babbling brook!

Crimson Columbine

Tiger Lilies

Yes. Really. They are about as big as a quarter.

It's called product placement!

Hello Grand Park!

It's HUGE. We came up here after making camp 1.6 miles down the mountain. Hoped to see some deer. No deer. Instead we spooked one by the toilet. Nice.

Rainier in all its glory

At this point we had a 300 degree vantage point and a 3000 foot drop. Yay.

White River

Fire Creek

Campsite #3. A very long steep down walk from Grand Park

These feet were made for walking....

Open flaps

We slept with it open all night. The silence was heavy. The creek kept babbling. Not the best sleep.

Good evening Rainier!

Heading home (for the night)

No deer in Grand Park but we waited too long so we had to run down a mountain in the dark. Fun.

Good morning Rainier!

The natural bridge

It's about right in the middle of the picture, right above the dead tree line. Do you see a black half moon? That's the shadow on the bottom of the natural bridge. Good job. Took me 2 days to see it.

BEAR!!!

Our first sighting! He was about 50 feet off the trail and about 40 feet from our 2nd campsite.

Another BEAR!

We saw three total. It's the little brown dot in the meadow by the trees. Break out the magnifying glass.

Some guy

On the way back we were met by hundreds of day hikers. This was one of the happy fellas.

Sunrise

A look from above of our first campsite.

Goodbye Rainier