April 30 - United States: Seattle, WA

Another beautiful day in Washington State!  How ironic that it was cloudy and rainy all the way through southern California, but so lovely when we got further north.

So today we headed to Mount Rainier before driving up to Seattle.  Almost all the roads were closed except one: the road to "Paradise".  It took us about two and a half hours to get there, and it was a gorgeous day for the drive.  On the way to the mountain, we passed Alder Dam.  This prompted Jon to make all sorts of "damn dam" jokes, which he loves to do.

Mount Rainier

Mt. Rainier was completely clear and pristine.  We drove up to the Visitor's Center at Paradise - named for the Paradise Glacier on the top of the mountain.  We made turkey sandwiches on sourdough bread and sat in the snow - literally - to eat in front of a beautiful view.  

Mount Rainier

Then we went for a hike.  We followed some heavily-equipped  mountain climbers as they began their trek to the summit.  The snow was pretty deep in places, and with ever other step we found ourselves knee-deep in snow.  It was actually a lot of work to climb through!  The weather was incredibly warm - about 50° - and the exertion had us stripped down to the lowest layer of clothing.

Jon - Knee-deep in Snow

When we finally reached the top of the hill, the climbers were far beyond us.  And our feet were soaked through our boots.  But that didn't stop us from snapping a bunch of pictures and playing around in the snow.

Snow Hiking and Tanning at The Same Time

During lunch, Jon had commented that there were quite a few planes and jets flying over the mountain.  Not a surprise, since it was such a clear day.  So - when we were up on the hill - we heard the sound of a jet again and looked up to see it.  Amazingly, it wasn't a jet but an avalanche high up on the mountain.  It was a pretty big one, but far enough away that we didn't have anything to worry about.  Part of the glacier had broken off near the summit and it took 2-3 minutes for the cloud of smoke to settle.  Pretty cool!

Avalanche On Mt Rainier  (arrow points to snow cloud)

After about an hour of hiking and playing in the snow, we were set and sunburned so we made our way back to the car.  We stopped by the visitor's center to take in some culture before we left.  Mount Rainier is the second most active volcano in the continental U.S., behind Mt. St. Helen's.  But the biggest topic of discussion is not the threat of lava but the risk of mud flows.  This was covered in great detail during a video we watched for a while.

Seattle

We drove for the next three hours into Seattle, where we were going to stay with Mel and Ken - two of our friends from China.  We drove up to their very cute little house just off of 75th street in northern Seattle.  Our first thoughts were "Rainy Seattle?  Whatever!  This is beautiful weather!"

We hung out with Mel for a while and got caught up as we waited for Ken to bike home from work.  He's going to ride in the two-day "Seattle to Portland" bike race soon, so he's training for it whenever he can.

We had dinner in a cute place in their neighborhood near Green Lake.  The food was great and we split a bottle of wine over dinner.  Then we went back to their house and broke out the Mah Jong tiles.  We played until about 11:00, which is when we realized that they both had to work tomorrow and it was cruel to keep them up so late.