Mount Rainier : Grove of the Patriarchs - August 8th

Each time I had come into Mount Rainier National Park, the parking lot for the "Grove of the Patriarchs," near the Stevens Canyon entrance on highway 123, was always full. But I arrived before 9 a.m. this morning and easily found a space to park.

Probably one of the easiest hikes in the park, the one-mile long trail takes you through an old growth forest, over a short suspension bridge, and onto an island in the middle of the Ohanapecosh River.

A short distance along the trail I came across this family "holding up" the tree. I offered to take a picture including the lady with the camera, but she said "No. We take this picture every year with the people in the same position!" What a fun thing to do, I thought.

I walked along the trail for a while with this lady and the lady she was with. They were from Nebraska on their way to visit friends in Tacoma.

This little girl was waiting for the rest of her family. She had been running around on the trail and apparently got tired. She gives some dimension to the size of the roots of the fallen tree.

An "artistic" rendering of someone crossing the river on the suspension bridge. The lighting was perfect for an instant!

I stopped at Box Canyon again. When I was here a couple of days ago the river was in deep shadow and barely visible. Here, on the south side of the bridge, it is 180 feet down to the river.

While on the north side, it is only 115 feet to the river.

At "The Bench" viewpoint after passing through Stevens Canyon. I sat here for over an hour just watching the clouds pass by, sometimes hiding the mountain, as above, other times exposing bits and pieces. And the cars. It was surprising to me how few of them stopped. And how few of the people in those cars actually got out of them when they did stop! The thing is, coming in from the east you don't even see Mount Rainier. And after going around the curve in the middle of the photo you don't see it either, unless you happen to glance in your rear view mirror at just the right time!  It was an interesting spot. Enjoyable sitting in the sunshine but quite cool when the wind picked up.

In the post "Travel Update... Glacier National Park" I mentioned that the windshield, on the passenger side, had been chipped driving through a construction zone in Iowa. One of the tendrils had been slowly migrating toward the rear view mirror. Upon leaving and heading back to the campground I noticed that tendril had lengthened to just beyond the rear view mirror into the drivers side. It now extended over halfway across the windshield. Earlier in the day it had only been about 8 inches long. And two of the other 6 or 8 small tendrils had also begun to lengthen, just while I was at the overlook. One was moving up to the top of the windshield and the other down toward the bottom. I'm guessing it was because Van Dora was facing south and the heat from the sun caused them to begin migrating. I couldn't feel any of the cracks, inside or out, but decided it was probably time to get the windshield replaced.

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Becky Wiseman, "Mount Rainier : Grove of the Patriarchs - August 8th," Kinexxions, posted September 26, 2015 (http://kinexxions.blogspot.com/2015/09/mount-rainier-grove-of-patriarchs.html : accessed [access date])