Even when the clouds sit on the road and all you see before you is mist and curve of the road as it hugs the mountain's edge (and you hope you are hugging it too), even when the clouds amass at the peak and those heights are forbidden you this day, even when it rains as you hike down from bench and snow lake on the slick steps, Mt. Rainer is the most beautiful place on earth.

This time, for the annual visit, we took the long route. We drove up to Sunrise, then over to Grove of the Patriarchs and finally to our campsite at Cougar Rock. John and I were trying to figure out the last time we went to Sunrise--12 years ago? Prekids we went camping there, took out of town guests every summer, we have a joyous shot there that we put on our prewedding site. So, obviously, the place means a lot to us. But, the Paradise area works better for the family camping trip and we have not managed to pull off two Rainer trips a year, yet. Thus, no visits to Sunrise.

It was as magnificent as I remembered. We got cold at the high elevation and took a short hike to stare at the remarkable glacier. Some day, I'd like to do some of the longer hikes again. But that would involve me being in shape for the longer hikes.

Grove of the Patriarchs was kind of annoying. It's a tourist hike--very short with a big pay off. So lots of people who don't know hiking etiquette are on it. I can live with them hiking in flip flops--not my problem. But when they ignored the one person at a time rule on the suspension bridge, making me wait and wait, yeah I got a bit snippy. The trees truly are over 25 feet around. I had to let go of annoyed and be amazed.

Because of our circuitous route, we spent an extra two hours driving around the mountain, and we don't allow electronics in the National Park. So, we went old school. We admired the view, hunted for waterfalls, played Ghost (the spelling game), and told riddles.

Camping was great. The kids have gotten to a stage where they are actually helpful when we insist they help and are basically safe to wander wherever, which they love to do. We always have a load of people on this trip, but this year we added two more families, so we had a huge load. Amazingly, it worked out great. David was thrilled out of his mind to have two more boys along, particularly an eleven year old boy. He glued himself to them, and they, with great graciousness and maturity, included him completely. All the girls, even those who had never met, interwove smoothly.

We took a new hike this year to Bench and Snow lake. It was moderate as opposed to easy. That meant the 700 feet elevation gain had a lot of up and down to it. It was very beautiful, of course, and David decided to turn it into a garbage collection hike and was a model citizen.

All total we did 5 hikes: Silver Forest, Grove of the Patriarchs, Bench and Snow Lakes, Myrtle Falls, and Cougar Rock to Longmire. They were all about 1.5-2.5 miles each.

The people were great, the food was great, the weather was not great but seemed to mostly rain at night, and the scenery was spectacular.