Taste of Kiwi

USA has some awesome National Parks. We’ve visited Olympic, Mt. Rainier and Mt. St Helens during the last few days.

I mentioned a little about Olympic in the last post. It’s a huge park and it covers both rainforest, lakes and mountains as well as the coast. My first shot today is of one of the tide pools on the coast. We were lucky enough to visit while it was low tide.

Mt. Rainier National park was beautiful. The day was clear and visibility good. I was disappointed during our last visit because we missed the wildflowers. This summer seems to be later and they are in full bloom. We wandered around the portion of the park called Paradise. The name is perfect because it is indeed Paradise.

Our final visit was to see Mt. St Helens, which erupted in 1980 causing great devastation. The area has regenerated but it’s still easy to see the damage with matchstick-like tree trunks, the lava flow area plus the side of the mountain that collapsed.

Of the three my favorite was Mt. Rainier but I’d recommend a visit to any of the three if you have a chance. They’re all beautiful.

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During the last few days we seem to have hit upon themes in Washington. Our first theme was a Bavarian one. Leavenworth is not far from Seattle (a few hours) and is a ski resort during the winter. It’s a very touristy place but still a lot of fun. All the buildings are painted with murals and we drank German-type beer while eating pretzels and bratwurst sausages. Yum! Here’s a photo of me standing at the bar.

And a photo of some of the murals and buildings. Even McDonald’s was in theme.

The next day it was a Western theme when we stayed at Winthrop. The town has wooden boardwalks and cowboy and western-type murals. This was also a fun place to stay.
Here’s a shot of the town.

The following day we drove through the Northern part of the Cascades and we had a tree theme going on. The scenery was really pretty and I kept thinking of Lauren Dane’s werewolves running around. They’re probably not situated in that part of the Cascades, but I imagined them peeking at me as I drove past. Here’s a scenery shot to finish my post.

I’ll be back tomorrow to tell you about our trip down the river/salmon and also our bear watching trip. I’m really looking forward to this trip, and luckily the weather is improving.

Happy Labor weekend to everyone in the US.

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