Vacationing in Portland and the Incredible Mount Rainier

Due to a heat wave on the west coast this week, we made the decision to book an Airbnb for our time in Portland. The weather we’ve had in Oregon and Washington so far are not at all like what we’ve been told about the Pacific Northwest. Most of the time it’s been sunny, hot days. Interestingly, we have had very, very few rainy days on this whole trip. I could maybe think of one or two days when it has rained which we are quite thankful for as being cooped up in the van for long periods of time would be a bit rough 😬 Temperatures this week were supposed to reach 100+ degrees several days in a row. We experienced those temperatures in the van once before, and were not excited about doing it again. I think we were quite happy with our decision. Our Airbnb was a cute little studio apartment close to downtown Portland. It felt like living in luxury for a few days having a shower, toilet, laundry machines, and air conditioning all in one place 😁 Tuesday morning we worked from our Airbnb and Trevor walked to get coffee and walk by the office of one of his favorite companies - The Bible Project. Once we were done with work, we braved the heat to check out Powell Books, the largest independent bookstore in the world, and then stopped to get some dinner. After dinner we headed over to the International Rose Garden and enjoyed strolling through the many beautiful flower gardens.

After work on Wednesday morning, we checked out of our Airbnb and went to get some treats. We got an açaí bowl, smoothie, and coffee to keep us cool and caffeinated before leaving Oregon and making the three hour drive to our next campground in Mount Rainier, Washington. Thankfully, temperatures were dying down from the heat wave and we were at a higher elevation so we could once again comfortably live in the van 😊 Our time over the last week had been full of lots of sightseeing along the Oregon coast, Tillamook, and Portland so we were thankful for the opportunity to relax and enjoy the next few evenings at Mount Rainier.

Friday after work we set out to do our first hikes in the park. We hiked to Narada Falls, Bench and Snow Lakes, and the Nisqually Vista Point which overlooks the impressive and giant Mount Rainier. We headed back to our campsite later that evening and happened upon an unfortunately familiar site - people set up at our site with their tent set up and fire blazing. We figured we wouldn’t have this issue here since the sites are reserved in advance rather than being first-come, first-serve. Thankfully, the family was very nice and told us they had booked two sites and cancelled one but must have mistakenly set up at the one they had cancelled. We agreed it was easier for us to just take their original site rather than have them tear everything down and move, so thankfully it was a fairly easy solution.

We didn’t have any super long hikes planned on Saturday, so we decided to sleep in a little bit. Once we had woken up and eaten some yummy pancakes, we drove further into the park to hike to Silver Falls. This was a fairly easy 3 mile hike to a beautiful waterfall. We finished up the hike mid-afternoon and spent the rest of the day getting things done around the van and, of course, Trevor watched the Columbus Crew game.

Sunday was our big hike day. We had planned to wake up early and get to the trailhead early, but we had procrastinated doing the dishes on Saturday and needed to wash about every dish we had in the van 😫 So once that was finally done, we started hiking the Skyline Loop. It was a challenging 6 mile loop with about 1700 feet of elevation gain that brings you to the base of Mount Rainier. There was still a decent amount of snow along the trail and often found ourselves sliding down and sloshing through snow drifts. When we reached the peak of the trail, we sat at a beautiful overlook for a while and ate some snacks. While we were sitting there, Trevor admitted to me that he saw a sign down by the bathrooms before we started the trail that said the east side of the loop still had a lot of snow and it was recommended to not hike on that side. He said he didn’t want to tell me until we had finished the east side because he thought I wouldn’t want to do the trail, so now that we were done hiking the east side he was happy to admit it to me 😏 After finishing our snacks we began our descent down the other side of the loop and just a few minutes in we looked at each other at the same time and said ‘Isn’t THIS the east side of the loop?’ We got a good laugh out of that, but thankfully the snow wasn’t much worse on the east side than the west side. The hike was a gorgeous hike through many wildflower meadows, epic views of the mountains, and we even saw some mountain goats and marmots along the way. We started the hike at 5400 feet of elevation and climbed to a little over 7000 feet. In the past a hike like this would have been pretty difficult for me as the high elevation usually makes it hard to catch my breath and gives me a pounding headache. I think my body is finally becoming accustomed to being at higher elevations making the hikes a lot easier and much more enjoyable. After our hike, we were both quite pooped and relaxed for the rest of the day in the van.

Monday was back to work and since we had pretty well completed the hikes we wanted to do in the park we enjoyed spending the next few evenings relaxing, hammocking, reading, etc. We were happy to have some restful days before the number of residents in our van doubles when my sister, Mandi and her boyfriend, Nathaniel join us next week. We are excited to have visitors and see some pretty neat places with them! I can’t wait to tell you about how a week of 4 people living in the van goes 😜

Trevor and I have come up with a sort of system for ranking the national parks that we have visited on this trip. Essentially, this system has three (four?) tiers. The top tier parks are ones that would qualify as a must-see in our book. The middle tier parks are ones that we thought were a great experience and bottom tier were a good experience. So here are our rankings for the parks we’ve seen thus far:

Top Tier: Yosemite, Death Valley, Sequoia/Kings Canyon, Crater Lake

Mid-Top Tier (we can’t decide on these 😁): Big Bend, Mount Rainier, Joshua Tree

Middle Tier: Lassen Volcanic, Redwoods, Carlsbad Caverns, White Sands, Saguaro

Bottom Tier: Hot Springs, Pinnacles, Guadalupe Mountains

Surprisingly, we actually pretty well agree on our rankings of all of the parks. A few times I have enjoyed scrolling back through our old blog posts and have been amazed at the variety of scenery and experiences we’ve had in the past 5 months. Since we are seeing new places almost every week, the start of our trip feels like so long ago. Even just a few weeks ago, feels like so long ago! It’s been just a little over a year since we bought the van and started converting it and we certainly have packed a lot of life into the past year!