We visited Mount Rainier National Park in Washington.
The entrance arch:
Entrance ranger station:
Park buildings, with a glimpse of the mountain:
Ancient log:
Museum:
Picnic lunch:
Waterfall:
Mt Rainier:
River and trees:
Top of a waterfall:
Paradise visitor center:
Flowers:
We stayed at Alder Lake Park Rocky Point Campground in Eatonville, Washington. (Campground Reviews listing.)
A delightful lakeside view.
Dates:
Weather:
Noise:
Site:
Internet (in usage priority order):
Amenities:
Here’s our review on Campground Reviews:
Lovely view of the lake and close to Mt Rainier
We stayed at the Rocky Point campground in site 423 and had the best view of the lake from our site. However, getting to the site was a little gnarly with our 40′ motorhome, as the road inside the park is very winding and narrow with many overhanging trees. The site was one of the few pull-throughs in the campground and just long enough for our motorhome and tow vehicle. There wasn’t a camp host on duty, but it was pretty easy to just go to our site and get settled. A ranger came by while we were at Mt. Rainier the next day and left our check-in paperwork under our wiper. There’s easy access to the day use area next door, so it was nice to cool off on a warm afternoon. The only limiting factor to this campground is the lack of a sewer connection at each site; otherwise, we would have happily stayed for much longer than two nights. We camped at Alder Lake Park in a Motorhome.
The RV park map:
A delightful lake view from our site:
Our site:
Only electric and water hookups:
Not a sewer dump:
Lake view:
Dinner with a view:
View from our site:
Moon:
Another night:
Aerial views:
Day use area:
Entrance:
Campground full:
The road in the campground was a bit tight for our coach:
Tiny trailer and tent:
Gate to the day use area:
Day use area:
A timelapse of driving our RV, a Tiffin Allegro Bus motorhome, 163 miles from Welches, Oregon to Eatonville, Washington.
We drove our coach 163 miles, about 4 hours of driving, from Buxton, Oregon to Eatonville, Washington.
The map route, heading north:
We pulled into a maintenance area to hook up our tow bar:
Our new Sinclair Trails logo sticker is visible inside with the slide-out in:
Jenn driving; yes, she drives our coach:
Enjoying some coffee at a traffic light stop:
Sandy:
Interesting MAX light rail station:
MAX light rail:
Heading towards Seattle:
Paladin on the back of my chair:
Leaving Portland:
Leaving Oregon:
Stopping at a rest area:
Lunch:
The rest area had an RV dump station; nice:
Paladin:
Bridge:
A small plane taking off:
Driving:
Another Tiffin joining the freeway:
Paladin passing over my lap:
Gee Cee’s Truck Stop; quite nice and not busy:
Another bridge:
We have Sinclair Trails logo Yeti coffee mugs:
Sleeping Paladin:
Mayfield Lake:
Jenn driving:
Paladin asleep:
Highway 12:
Hey look, another bridge:
Hobo Inn, staying in train cars:
Day use area at Alder Lake:
Our destination, Rocky Point campground:
A rather narrow road within the campground:
One of the use-cases for getting a logo designed for Sinclair Trails was to put it on our coach.
Here’s me adding the logo sticker to our slide-out, above the states map:
The Sinclair Trails logo sticker; looks really good, I think:
Above the map:
We also got another sticker with the SinclairTrails.com website and social name (e.g. Twitter and Facebook):
The stickers:
I got a Vulcan bike lock to secure our bikes. It was highly recommended by other Lectric owners. It is very heavy-duty; they claim it can’t be cut with bolt cutters or hand tools — an important consideration with ebikes apparently being a high-value theft target at some campgrounds:
While in the area, we visited our favorite winery, Marchesi Vineyards in Hood River:
We did a wine tasting (alas, not free, as we are no longer members there, since we can’t easily get wine deliveries):
A resident dog, Jazzy, spent some time hanging out with us:
Jazzy and Jenn:
A charcuterie platter for lunch:
Misters keeping us cool on a hot day:
Vines:
Jazzy (with a boo-boo):
Vines:
Of course, we came away with a case of wines. That’ll keep us going until we can get back again next year!
The cupboards in our coach can get fairly warm when sitting in the sun. A common solution for that is to add extra protection via silvered bubble insulation like Reflectix. I recently added some to the back of most of the cupboards:
While staying near Mount Hood, we of course had to visit Trillium Lake for its great view of the mountain.
A view of the mountain on the way:
Trillium Lake and Mount Hood from the dam area:
We had a picnic dinner:
Then enjoyed views of the mountain over the lake:
This may look a little familiar: it’s the view on the Magne Shade on our coach windscreen (except during daytime):
More pics:
Ducklings:
Lots of people enjoying the lake:
A quick post with a couple of videos from short rides around Mt Hood Village. No photos, other than embedded in the first video, since those I took appeared in my review of the campground.
As mentioned previously, I use Strava to track my rides, and Relive to convert the routes into 3D videos.
Here’s the first ride, by myself:
And the second ride, with Jenn:
Not overly exciting, but a handy way to explore large campgrounds.