Where: Mount Rainier National Park, WA, U.S.A. (Paradise area)
When: September 2006 and June 2009
How: ~ 2.5 hours or 120 miles from Seattle south-eastward.
Things we did: Day trip: Hiking, photography, wildlife watching.
I had never really witnessed the fall season when I lived in India. For me, the fall season was more of a season you got to witness only in Yash Chopra movies where the lady clad in white clothes would wave her dupatta, running around forests and gardens that had turned beautiful shades of yellow and red. Remember the movies Silsila and Mohabbatein? It is amazing how much of our perception of things is based on movies. When I arrived in the U.S. in the fall a couple of years ago, I was amazed at the color changes nature assumed with the change in seasons. Spectators would see me staring open-mouthed at the continuing landscape of colors. One month into my moving to the U.S., I visited Mount Rainier National Park for a day hike in the fall colors. Mount Rainier is a volcanic mountain and the highest peak in the state of Washington. This national park is one of the three national parks in Washington. There are at least three different points of entering the national park (Paradise area, Longmire area, Sunrise area, etc.). There are more, but I haven’t been to them. This time we parked at the Paradise area and started hiking. There are different trails you can take, and most of them are easy or of moderate difficulty. The best thing about hiking from the Paradise area is that on a clear day, you get an amazing view of the mountain. We hiked for about 2 hours and between puffing, panting, and taking pictures, we managed to spot some wildlife too.
If you look at the last 4 pictures I have posted, they are the pictures of the same place (Paradise area) taken in June instead of October. There is amazing amount of snow during the summer which all melts by September to give way to the fall colors.
