Mt Rainier - Summerland and Patriarchs

After a cold night,  I got up and packed up my campsite.  The goal for the day was to do a 2 hour hike, then head down to the Ohanapecosh campground in the southeast corner of the park.  When I parked at the trailhead for a hike near my current campground, I started taking some pictures for a family.  We started talking about the hikes we were planning, and I realized that since he guy had done the 93 mile Wonderland loop trail all the way around Mt Rainier twice, he might know a bit about "the most beautiful area on Rainier".  So, I switched my plans on the spur of the moment,  and found a new trail head that cut off an extra 5 miles from the place the family was leaving from.
It was a really outstanding area to hike in, and Summerland is a great name to describe the area.  It was a 9 mile hike in total, and  2100 foot elevation change.  Tough hike after the previous day out on the Burroughs,  but well worth the achy knees.  Big trees, waterfalls, friendly hikers, trail maintenance workers were cracking joke with me, the lupine and paintbrush were peaking, and the views?  Wow.   Amazed once again. 

After making it back down from Summerland, I got my camp spot setup, got my "passport" stamp at the visitor center, and headed to the Trail of the Patriarchs.  They have done research on this area, and determined most of the older trees are around 1,000 years old.  Pretty amazing stuff!  Most were bigger than anything I had seen in the Olympics, so yeah, I was impressed!

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