Weekend drive

I am very behind in my blogging so I don't remember what weekend this was, but it was sometime in late June, we decided to drive up to Paradise on Mt Rainier and see what it was like at this time of the year.  We were hoping to see some snow and maybe do some hiking.  It turned out that there was a lot of snow and not really any hiking unless you were on skis.  It was a rainy day up there so we are all wearing our rain gear, and because of that you cannot see the top of Rainier, but we already have a lot of pictures of that.  It was a fun day out and we climbed up the wall of snow and walked around and hung out at the Visitors Center. 

 This is just outside the Visitor Center there, we have not started up the snow yet, but it is amazing to us that it is always plowed.  You can get the the visitor center all year round.

 Here is the snow ramp for people to get up onto the snow. Because it has been warm the snow was slushy and super slippery, which made it fun to come down but hard to go up.

 Here we are walking around on the snow.

 Proof that Ryan came too, although I think us being in the mountains is proof enough. We try to switch off taking pictures so we can both be in them. I was not very good this time around.

 The giant wall, there was a little creek running down at the edge of the parking lot and clayton was having fun knocking snow in and watching how fast it would melt.

 Brody is taking a turn this time. Clayton is kicking it in we spent a good 30 min just doing this.

 This is the climbing permit office. We took a picture because of the snow walls, it was pretty cool.

Playing in the snow still. We walked to this building and then walked back and that took an hour of our time even though they were a couple hundred feet apart.

Memorial Weekend

Well, we are here in Washington so we decided to do what we do every weekend... any guesses... well, if you guessed camping you were RIGHT! We also did not realize that it was Memorial weekend until Friday so there were very few options for camping. Luckily I was able to find a couple campgrounds that are within 20 min from the house and they are first come first serve, so we headed up there in hopes of getting one. We stayed there for a couple days. Saturday we did a couple hikes, and happened to run into one of the best rock climbing spots in our area. There were several small cliffs to climb and many places for the kids to play. There is an old train line that used to run up there and they have since filled it in with gravel. From what were heard it goes on for several miles, we only walked a little ways but there are some awesome bridges that we crossed and could look down on some rivers and beautiful scenery.

 Brody playing by the campsite. There were a lot of big logs to walk along and climb on. Which is one the boys favorite things to do.

 So we did not have exact change to pay for the campsite, but the campground manager would not give us change, so we had to buy firewood. Unfortunately, we did not plan on a fire, so there was nothing to cook in it. But this kids like to watch it, and Clayton helped Ryan build it.

 Hanging out at our site making food, or doing dishes. The kids running around playing.

 More playing at the campground. The big stump in the background is where they spent most of their time.

 Out on our hike, still had lots of logs to climb on...

 This was a little rock cave with roots and trees all over. Clayton thinks he could make a pretty good shelter out of it.

 Up on top of the shelter!

 A view from below of the awesome bridges, this is before we knew that we would be able to get up on top of them and walk around.

 On top! the kids loved the view and had a lot of fun running around on the long bridges.

This is a really cool tree that we saw, it is growing out of the stump of another tree that was cut down.