Playtime!: Mt. Rainier: Ohanapecposh & Sunrise

We weren’t able to get a reservation at Cougar Rock for the whole time we wanted to be in Mt. Rainier so we had to move over to the Silver Springs Campground, a National Forest Campground on the White River near the Sunrise area of the park.

I was up early this morning – 7 am – because I was freezing. Not sure what it was about last night that was so cold, but I was freezing! I got a shower, made coffee and read my book for book club until about 8:30 when I started getting ready to go. Mom and Dad were pretty much ready then too so by 9 we were on the road.

We were driving through the park to get to the other side – so we headed back up toward Paradise but went beyond into parts of the park we hadn’t seen yet! We stopped at a few overlooks along the way but mostly drove straight through to the other side of the park.

We climbed and climbed the mountain and when we got to the top and started to go down my phone sprung to life! It was going crazy getting texts, emails and facebook notifications! I haven’t really missed my internet much except for Monday night when we got back after being lost and I really wanted to tweet about it and connect with my friends, but it was good to hear the phone doing it’s thing again! I resisted temptation to stop there and read facebook, emails etc and we continued on to Ohanapecosh.

Ohanapecosh is the southeastern section of the park and it’s very quiet – there are fewer “services” there, just a campground, a picnic area and a small visitor center.

After we checked out the visitor center we headed up the road a little bit to take a walk on the Grove of the Patriarchs Trail. This is a short trail with a boardwalk loop that features old growth Cedar, Douglas Fir and other big evergreen trees. Some of these trees were already 500 years old when Columbus “discovered” America in 1492!

After our walk we went back to where we’d parked the Motorhomes and had lunch before heading up the road along the eastern edge of the park to get to the campground.

We began to climb out of the valley and guess what? My phone had a connection at the top of the mountain! This time I pulled out so I could get through all my emails and post a tweet. As I was pulling into the pull out I saw a Ranger behind me with his lights flashing! YIKES! What did I do? I truly didn’t know. Other than pick up my phone to LOOK at it I hadn’t broken any laws. Turns out there was another car between me and the Ranger that I couldn’t see and the Ranger was pulling them over! Phew!

I spent a few minutes sorting through emails and sent my tweet before continuing down the mountain. It was only a few minutes later when we got to our campground and guess what? I have coverage here! It’s slow and not very reliable, but it’s there!

Many of the campgrounds we camp in have sites that you have to back into. Our 1st night at North Cascades I just backed my RV right in with no problems, and no help. Later I moved to another site, and Mom and Dad were both helping me – they were screaming directions, most of which I didn’t understand and did the opposite of which resulting in yelling and frustration on all parts. The next time I needed to back in, Dad helped and again it dissolved into fighting and frustration because I just didn’t understand what he wanted me to do. I finally asked that they let me do it myself and that they couldn’t watch or provide input. I assured Dad that I’d get out and look and make sure I wasn’t going to hit anything.

When we arrived at out campground we discovered that our campsites are very far apart – he went off to get his MH parked and left me to my own devices to get myself parked. Guess what? I did it! I got my little RV into the site – on the 1st try, got it positioned just right and better yet – didn’t hit anything! :-)

As I was walking up to see what the plan was for the rest of the afternoon I see Mom on the ground with Dad next to her! She’d tripped over the edge of the road and cut her hand, bruised her arm and her leg! Nothing was broken – just bumped and scraped.

After she got cleaned up we went to check out the Sunrise area of the park. The road is about 10 miles in and of course it has excellent views of the Mountain! This time we are viewing the east side and there is a lot more snow on the mountain here – oddly enough not as much on the trails though! We checked out the ranger station and the day lodge (the visitor center there is under construction). Also while we were there we made a plan for tomorrow!

As we were driving back we realized that we needed gas in the Jeep – we have enough to get to to Sunrise and back but that’s it. We had no idea where the gas station was so I pulled out the phone and google mapped “gas stations” and found one close, then got directions to it, then we even called it to see if they were open (we didn’t want to drive all the way down there and use up all our gas to discover they were closed) – I really wondered how in the world we’d survived 3 days without the phone working! ;-)