Point Defiance Zoo and Aquarium

On Friday, our last full day in Washington, we decided to take Jonah to the Zoo. We went to the Point Defiance Zoo and Aquarium. Jonah had a fun time looking at all the animals. I did too actually. I hadn't been to a zoo in years.



We saw a musk ox.

 



And a Reindeer

My favorite, the Arctic Fox

The Polar bear.

The Walrus was surprisingly cool. He was swimming back and forth across the glass. Evertime his stomach would brush up against the glass, all his fat would ripple.

We also saw a lot of other animals, like penguins, sea otters, tigers, and elephants. But I didn't get any decent pictures of those.

Don't really have a lot to say about our last day in Seattle. I had mixed feelings about our vacation being over. On one hand I was excited about getting back home and sleeping in my own bed again. On the other hand, I wasn't looking forward to the long day of travel we had ahead of us and wasn't looking forward to going back to work. As well, there was still plenty of things in that area that I wanted to check out. Oh well, I guess that means we'll need to make a return trip at some point in the future.

Thursday in Tacoma

On Thursday, our friend Daniel had to go back to work. But thankfully our friend Sarah was finally feeling better.

So we decided to spend the day in Tacoma. There is a children's museum in downtown Tacoma that we wanted to check it out to give Jonah something to do. It was a really cool, and admission was free. They only asked for a donation. It was defnitely a place worth going to. Jonah had a blast.

He got to play on a rope bridge.

 

Had some fun playing with water.

 

Whoa!! Ooo!!

Jonah went down the slide by himself for the first time. He loved it. As soon as he slid down, he would run back up to go again.

 

Head first! What a daredevil.

This was probably the highlight of Jonah's trip. But eventually we had to leave. We went and got lunch. After lunch, we just walked around for a bit. We went down by the Glass Blowing Museum in Tacoma. We didn't actually go in (we were feeling cheap), but there was plenty of art on the outside to look at. And it was just a cool looking building.

 

 

Every once in a while, we'd see a C-17 fly overhead, heading in for a landing at McChord AFB.

Jamie trying to sneak up on a seagull.

 

After being holed up inside all winter by polar vortexes in Michigan, it was really nice to just walk around in a light jacket with blue skies overhead.

Snowshoeing Mount Rainier

When we decided that we were going to Washington state in February, there was one thing I knew I had to do. That one thing was to go snowshoeing on Mount Rainier. My friend had posted pictures on Facebook of his previous snowshoe trips to the mountain, and  it looked like a ton of fun. So I was determined to do it when I got the chance

It worked out that Wednesday was our day to do it. Daniel and I went to the Airforce base in the morning to rent the snowshoes. The base has an adventure store where you can rent almost anything outdoor related, from skis and snowshoes to tents, campers, and kayaks. After I had my gear, we headed down the road towards the mountain.

As we arrived at the National Park, I was amazed at how green everything still was. I thought that since we were this close to the mountain, there would at least be some snow on the ground. In fact, it was actually drizzling as we entered the park.

As we wound our way up the mountain, the temperature slowly began to drop. The rain turned to slush and finally to snow. By the time we got to Paradise, which is at 5400 feet, there was tons of snow. And I mean tons. Feet and feet of it. During the winter, the road into the park is only open up to Paradise, and it sounds like the road is closed frequently due to snow. I read somewhere the Mount Rainier is one of the snowiest places on earth. After visiting it in the winter, I believe it.

Once we got to the parking lot at Paradise, we strapped on our snowshoes and prepared ourselves to go. Our first obstacle was to actually get out of the parking lot. Due to the abundance of snow, the parking lot was surrounded by 5 foot snowbanks with sides that were cut straight up and down. It took a little bit of scrambling to get up, but eventually we escaped the parking lot.

We started side hilling our way up the mountain and quickly came into a huge bowl. From someone who lives his life surrounded by flat corn fields, I was in awe. Even though visibility was low, what I could see was absolutely amazing.

From the bowl, we worked our way up to the top of a ridge. I bet on a clear day the view would have been spectacular.

Walking with snowshoes is somewhat awkward. I had only tried snowshoeing once before, so it took a little bit to get used to walking with these huge things strapped to your feet.

As we were climbing up the ridge, the wind started to pick up. And visibility began to drop. But that didn't stop us from having a great time.

When we made it to the top of the ridge, or at least the top of what we could see, visibility was bad enough that we decided that we should turn around. Although I wanted to keep going and see how high we could get, it was definitely the smart move. With the clouds moving in, it was difficult to tell where we were in relation to where we started. To be safe, we decided to follow our tracks back down to the parking lot. Though with the wind, our tracks were already beginning to get swept over.

But no worries, we made our way back to the parking lot with no problem.

At Paradise, there is a lodge where you can stay. But it isn't open during the  winter. For the life of me I can't figure out why?

In case you can't tell, what you can see is the second story of the lodge. The entire first floor is buried.  No wonder it closes down.

We took a break and ate lunch. With more fuel in the tank, we had enough energy to go out again for a little while. This time, we explored a different area. We made another climb, but not near as high as on our first excursion. I was definitely feeling it by this point, so we didn't go for too long on that second spurt.

The wind was starting to die down a little, and by the time we made it back to the parking lot, you could tell that the clouds were starting to thin out. We unstrapped our snow shoes loaded up the car and headed down the mountain. As we made the drive down, the clouds continued to lift, slowly revealing the majestic landscape all around us.

Eventually, there were blue skies.

With how cloudy and overcast it was for most of the week, we didn't get too many unobstructed views of Mount Rainier. But thankfully, we did get a few.