Mount Rainier National Park

Up early this morning.  Met a nice lady who told me that there is a large group of disabled veterans in the campground who are a part of Project Healing Waters.  She is not a vet but a nurse who volunteers for the  project.   Project Healing Waters teaches vets to fly fish.  She said the idea came from a doctor at Walter Reed Medical Center who was working with vets.  He loved to fly fish and one day he asked one of his patients to come with him.  The vet did not know how to fly fish and as he was learning, the doctor could see that the vet's whole attitude and demeanor change for the better.  That was the seed for Project Healing Waters.  She said vets in this group were from the Korean, Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan Wars.  She said that this weekend, the group was participating in a contest to see who can catch the largest fish.  Anyway, it was interesting to hear about this group.

We drove through this canyon to Yakima.  The road followed the Yakima River through a beautiful canyon.
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These men were fly fishing.  

We saw a small group of pronghorn antelope.  Look closely.  They are there.

Another man fly fishing.

Yakima is the heart of apple growers.  We saw this unusual way to grow apples.  The trees are trained to grow up wire fencing.  This was the only field we saw with trees growing like this.  All of the other fields contained trees and the trees were full of apples.   We saw several fruit stands selling apples, peaches, and cherries.  We stopped at one and brought peaches and apples.  We had peaches for dessert tonight.  They were so sweet that I hardly added any sugar.

Yakima is a confusing city when it comes to highways.  We made a wrong turn and ended up going downtown.   We needed gas so we stopped and purchased it for $2.96 a gallon.  We saw signs at stations where the price was over $3.00 a gallon.  This is the highest we have paid so far.  I am always on the lookout for interesting signs and I found a few in Yakima.  Bonnie and Clyde's is a muffler shop.  Couldn't resist taking a picture.  

Marijuana is readily available in Washington.

Mel's Diner.  I don't know if Alice works there.

We finally found our way out of Yakima and began the 60 mile drive to Mount Rainier.

The rest of the pictures were taken in the park.

At an overlook, we found this waterfall.

Mount Rainier was very elusive today.  This is the best picture we could get.  It remained covered in clouds sometimes totally.

This is Box Canyon.  The water is 180 feet below.

The pictures above and below were taken on the highway as we were driving back to Ellensburg.  We had trouble getting through Yakima again.  The highways that go through Yakima need better signage because we had difficulty finding the routes we needed.

We were so glad that we didn't go to Mount Rainier yesterday.   There would have been a lot of road construction but we missed it all today.   It was a nice day.  We drove about 200 miles round trip but it was worth it.  So far, we have driven the car about 1000 miles.

Tomorrow we head west again.  We will be camped outside of Olympic National Park for three nights/two days.  The wind is gusting from the west very hard right now.  We hope it dies down before we get on the road.  There is a 6,000 foot mountain pass we have to get over and if the wind is blowing toward the front of the motorhome, it will make it more difficult to chug up the mountain.

What a beautiful way to end a beautiful day!!