Day 6: Mount Rainier Gondola

By Friday, we were beat.  We used it as a "recovery day" before our flight home. We slept in, and enjoyed breakfast at the hotel.  I'm not much for big breakfasts...but there were eggs, sausage, bacon, waffles...and a whole lot of other things to choose from.  Eating a big breakfast meant we needed snacks or less for lunch, so it was one way we could save a little money on this trip.    We decided to keep it simple, so we picked one fun thing to do just a couple hours away from our "home base" in Puyallup.
We visited the Mount Rainier Gondola at the Crystal Mountain Resort.
What a beautiful place!

I learned on this trip that pictures do a poor job of giving any perspective to the size of hills and mountains.  This was a steep ride.  We rode up the gondola with a lady who works at the resort.  She rides the gondola almost daily, but still won't ride on the side looking down.  :-)

We loved it!  It was such a smooth, quiet ride that the height didn't bother us a bit.  

You ride all the way up this steep bluff, and then just as you crest the top a majestic view of Mount Rainier appears.

A kind older gentleman offered to take our picture.  He was a little flustered by my big fancy camera.  He snapped a picture of us (and everybody else on the mountain).  But sure enough, we were in focus, so with a little cropping the picture was just fine:

Boo looks a little tentative about the cliff behind us.  It was steep!  But Mike, on the other hand, scoffed at it saying he had climbed worse on Monday.  ;-)

There were some hiking trails on the summit, but after a week on my feet, my ankles were blown up like balloons (this was a first for me).  So, I grabbed a lounge chair and enjoyed the view while they explored a bit.

The local critters kept me entertained as they ran under my chair and even out from under my skirt!

This guy came close enough to touch:

I wished I had a little something to offer them.  :-)

This was Mount Adams off in the distance:

And if you look really close, the dark shadow in the center of this picture is Mount St. Helens:

Just a gorgeous spot...we would highly recommend it!  If you like critters, bring a crust of bread and they'd probably take it from your hand.

It was yet another hot day, so this was a perfect choice as there was a cool breeze at the summit. Down we go... 

That parking lot was huge!  It looks so tiny in the picture... And this concludes the site seeing portion of our trip.   I can't believe how much we saw and did last week!  It really was an amazing vacation.  We were so thankful that the weather was favorable for site seeing (hot, but no rain!), and in spite of being tired and run-down, we were healthy. There's just so much to see and do in Washington...a week wasn't enough!  But, it feels so very good to be back home...where we can get anywhere we want to go in 15 minutes or less.  ;-)