A Bunch More Waterfalls at Mt. Rainier
Pacific Northwest August Travelog #4
SEA Airport - Sun, 7 Aug 2022, 7:30pm
It's been another day, another busy day, of vacation on our three-day weekend trip to the Pacific Northwest. But busy in a good way! We hiked a bunch more waterfalls in Mt. Rainier National Park.
We started the day in Puyallup. We got up at 7am, the earliest of this trip. We showered, dressed, packed, and checked out, rolling in the car by 8am. We grabbed a quickie breakfast at 7-Eleven again (yay, Big Gulp and roller taquitos!) as we drove the 90 minutes or so out to the park. There was already a pretty long line of cars at the entrance station.
We reached the trailhead for our first hike, Comet Falls, at 10am and began the 3.8 mile roundtrip, 900 foot ascent. Along the way we enjoyed views of numerous smaller falls. The river basically drains down through a narrow canyon for those 900 vertical feet. Ultimately we reached Comet Falls and... wow. It's a 300' falls with a few smaller tiers below it.
After Comet Falls we drove 1/2 mile or so to Christine Falls, which is right by the roadside. Christine Falls is actually on the same creek as Comet Falls; but the trail passes above it. We couldn't see it from the hike. But it's right there at the roadside, so it's easy to add on.
Our third stop was at Nerada Falls. It's a pretty big falls, about 80' of drop with a wide creek pouring over a rocky wall. It's an easy trek; a wide path leads to it less than 1/4 mile away. The only tough part is the return ascent. That path climbs over 100' in a short distance.
We left the trailhead for Nerada Falls a bit after 3pm. That may seem like a long time before our 8:30pm flight out of Seattle-Tacoma airport but it's not. The drive to the airport was a smidge over 2 hours, plus we needed time for stops washing up and changing clothes, and filling gas. Then there's the whole car-rental-return shuffle, followed by the TSA security shuffle. And SEA is one of those airports where TSA lines are always way slower than most other US airports. On the way out from San Jose I got randomly selected for pat-down screening, and even with that the security shuffle at SJC still took less than half the time at SEA.
Now we're at the airport awaiting our flight home. So far it's showing on time... but this is Southwest, they can always find a way to leave late!
Update: Southwest managed to be on time this time! We rolled from the gate promptly at 8:30, arrived at SJC around 10:30, and got home-home a bit after 11pm.
SEA Airport - Sun, 7 Aug 2022, 7:30pm
It's been another day, another busy day, of vacation on our three-day weekend trip to the Pacific Northwest. But busy in a good way! We hiked a bunch more waterfalls in Mt. Rainier National Park.
We started the day in Puyallup. We got up at 7am, the earliest of this trip. We showered, dressed, packed, and checked out, rolling in the car by 8am. We grabbed a quickie breakfast at 7-Eleven again (yay, Big Gulp and roller taquitos!) as we drove the 90 minutes or so out to the park. There was already a pretty long line of cars at the entrance station.
We reached the trailhead for our first hike, Comet Falls, at 10am and began the 3.8 mile roundtrip, 900 foot ascent. Along the way we enjoyed views of numerous smaller falls. The river basically drains down through a narrow canyon for those 900 vertical feet. Ultimately we reached Comet Falls and... wow. It's a 300' falls with a few smaller tiers below it.
After Comet Falls we drove 1/2 mile or so to Christine Falls, which is right by the roadside. Christine Falls is actually on the same creek as Comet Falls; but the trail passes above it. We couldn't see it from the hike. But it's right there at the roadside, so it's easy to add on.
Our third stop was at Nerada Falls. It's a pretty big falls, about 80' of drop with a wide creek pouring over a rocky wall. It's an easy trek; a wide path leads to it less than 1/4 mile away. The only tough part is the return ascent. That path climbs over 100' in a short distance.
We left the trailhead for Nerada Falls a bit after 3pm. That may seem like a long time before our 8:30pm flight out of Seattle-Tacoma airport but it's not. The drive to the airport was a smidge over 2 hours, plus we needed time for stops washing up and changing clothes, and filling gas. Then there's the whole car-rental-return shuffle, followed by the TSA security shuffle. And SEA is one of those airports where TSA lines are always way slower than most other US airports. On the way out from San Jose I got randomly selected for pat-down screening, and even with that the security shuffle at SJC still took less than half the time at SEA.
Now we're at the airport awaiting our flight home. So far it's showing on time... but this is Southwest, they can always find a way to leave late!
Update: Southwest managed to be on time this time! We rolled from the gate promptly at 8:30, arrived at SJC around 10:30, and got home-home a bit after 11pm.