08.09.09

08.09.09

Washington

We slept in today since we had decided last night to go to the LATE service at church!  We had, of course, breakfast in the hotel... then headed off to Mars Hill Church for services.  We enjoyed the service, although it was quite different for us considering the pastor (Mark Drischoll) wasn't actually THERE, but preaching via satellite from somewhere else.  Everything else was live.  Ridiculously organized children's program with Top Security.  I might have been all impressed if it hadn't taken us 45 minutes to retrieve our daughter.  I kind of wanted to say, "No need for such top security, we lost her on the cruise ship so we already suffer through OUR OWN inadequate security and we are fine with it".  No one was listening.  The Seattle People were pretty nice.

Afterwards, we went to the grocery store (Safeway) and got our lunch things for the week... had a picnic in the hotel room, then headed out to Mount Rainier National Park.

It took us longer to get there than we thought as we had to drive on some back roads, but the drive was COMPLETELY beautiful!  Probably should have gone to the early service!  Along the way we saw these deer playing by the road... 

We finally reached our destination and got our Passport Stamp in the National Parks book Laurie got us last summer.  

No, we do NOT feel the need to go to every National Park, like we do with the capitols, but we will try to go them whenever we are "in the area"... seriously?  The ones we have been to have all been SO BEAUTIFUL!  And peaceful.  

This picture is just because she is cute:

... and who doesn't love blowing weeds all over someone else's yard?  Although, I'm sure she COULD get arrested for doing it at a National Park.  Perhaps I should delete that picture...

This is Christine Falls.  We liked this stop... super pretty, AND we have a friend named Christine so it really made me think of her!  

Note the Death Grip on the kids... The drop behind me was SERIOUSLY a long ways down... and of course my Not Scared of Anything Children were hanging over the edge while cars were whizzing by on the road.  

The bridge is where we WERE standing for the previous pictures.  We hiked down to the bottom to get this view... you will be happy to know, I was NOT wearing flip flops this time.

See, anywhere where they HAVE to post this sign is probably not a great place to take 2 very active children.  I'm just saying.  Fortunately, ONE of said children is a RULE FOLLOWER.  Unfortunately, ONE thinks she's a monkey.  Hmmmmm.

This is our view of what I like to call, The Very Elusive Mount Rainier.  Truth be told, people who LIVE in this area RARELY see the mountain.  The weather is usually raining and overcast.  Visibility is usually nil.  We knew this heading in... anyways, while we were looking around (remember the Sheer Cliffs?  The valley below was BREATHTAKING!) I got to thinking about how great it would be to "blow those clouds away"... if only it were that easy.  There were people behind us who had a tripod with camera set up and said they had been there all day "waiting".  I shot a quick prayer up, you know one like, "oh come on!  PAAAHHHHlease!  We came all this way.... would it REALLY be that difficult?!?!??!"  you know, because I'm all patient like that.  Suddenly, the clouds blew away!  (apparently whining works with God, too) and we had a pretty good view of the summit!  

Of course, I yell out, "there it is!! Hey, There's the top" and noticed that the Tripod People were NOT listening to me, so I said again, "There it is!  No One is listening to me!"  and just to make me laugh for a very long time, about 5 minutes later they exclaimed, "Oh my!  You can see the summit!  Get to the camera dear!"  Do you see why I'm so easily entertained?

ANYWAYS, while looking at our Surprise Glimpse of the top, I got thinking about how like God... I mean, thankful that He granted us that glimpse, but how He reveals Himself to us, much like the clouds being blown away for mere minutes... those seemingly "random" things that happen to us.  Where we actually get to see Him orchestrating it...   My sister always says "It's a God Thing".  I have a much better picture in my mind now.  I say it all the time: nothing is Random.  Which made me think of that Chris Tomlin song "How great is our God" because, Really?  How can you NOT think of that when surrounded by THIS?  

The Splendor of a King

Clothed in Majesty

Let all the earth rejoice

Let all the earth rejoice...

Ok, so that was MY mountain-top moment... but a really great one, and I'm so thankful for this visual I have ingrained in my head now.  I needed that.  

Back to the Park:

After taking about 100 pictures of the same thing (remember when I said I took over 3000 pictures on our vacation?!) we moved on to Narada Falls, further up the mountain...

They are waiting for me to hike down to the bottom...

It's a steep hike down and of course, BOTH kids went down on their bums, but they were giggling about it, so I'm not so sure it wasn't on purpose...

It is so hard to capture the real beauty of the things we were able to see... can you see that bridge they were on in the previous picture, near the top...

I will take this time to give the weather update... when we started out it was 65 degrees and no humidity (*sigh*) and the closer we moved UP the mountain, the cooler it got.  Just beautiful weather!  

Carly's great photography... 

We stopped near the summit (well, the highest place you can stop, then you hike up, which we DID NOT do... this time!) and walked around... then headed back down the mountain.  Just as we were passing the ViewPoint where we were able to see the summit earlier, THERE WAS THE MOUNTAIN in plainer view than before, so we stopped for 100 more pictures!  I should say, we BACKED up and pulled over, which I'm sure they really don't want people doing near Sheer Cliffs...

This is a close up of the Nisqually Glacier that is on the top of the mountain. There are several glaciers on the top (that "Snow Capped" Appearance would actually be glaciers) and they are VERY COOL to zoom in on... if you click any of these pictures they SHOULD get bigger so you can see details better...

We spent about 4 hours in the park since we didn't get there until 4pm... we WISH we had gotten there first thing in the morning so we could have stayed longer, it was just so beautiful and peaceful and well, BIG... so if you ever go, take that into consideration!  

On our way heading back into Seattle, we saw this sign...

Which made us laugh, you know until we realized that could be information we might need, considering Mount Rainier is actually a volcano.  Hmmmm.... Not to worry, Ben had figured out our McGregor Family Evacuation Plan by the time we got back to the hotel... It's always good to be prepared...

We stopped at a Chinese Buffet for dinner (just a random pick that turned out to be GREAT!) then got back to our lodgings for a much deserved rest!