We headed down to a dry camping spot on Riffe Lake in Morton WA. This was a good base to see both Mount Rainier and Mount St Helens and only a 2 hour drive.

Steve neglected to include our neighbor behind us in this photo as it would have included a topless 300 lb lady. She wasn’t embarrassed at all but Steve was

Our neighbors were all locals and had been coming to this site for years. Someone had just left so we were able to pull in to beautiful lake front site

People in spots like this one are always surprised to see us pull in due to our size and Florida license plates. It inevitably begs the question, “how did you find this spot”?

Mount Rainier was about 45 minutes away and we first spotted it as we were entering the park. The weather couldn’t have been better and finally we’d found a mountain that wasn’t shrouded in cloud.

There’s a road right through the southern side of the mountain, so we entered the park in Longmire and drove east and arrived at the Paradise Visitors Center.

Waterfall just before the Paradise visitors center

This is Reflection Lake, obvious name, and an idyllic location on the east side of the park.

Cool reflection

Next day we went to see Mount St. Helens. From here you can see Mount Adams and Mount Rainier

The last time this mountain erupted was in 1980, which started as a massive avalanche caused by a 5.1 earthquake. There’s no sign of lava here even though we were within the 230 square miles that were scorched.

This was the spot where a family was camping when the volcano erupted, and were actually lucky enough to out-drive it

Just one of those odd sights one sees driving along, Minions.

Lawn/field ornaments

Nice sunset

So we saw what we came to see, met some locals and off we went into the sunset