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Finally back on the hamburger trail with #17 at Red Mill in Seattle. Per the GQ List requirement, I ordered the Double Bacon Cheeseburger, which was about twice as big as I was really interested in eating. And yet I persevered.

Comes with bacon bunny at no extra charge!

The lineup. See if you can find my mom’s elbow in the photo!

My main impression was that it was a really big burger, what with the two patties and all. Red Mill is famous for their secret sauce, which is sort of a barbecue+pepper thing. It’s distinctive. I liked the burger, it was unique. I don’t think I loved it, though. But the fries were good, I got plenty full, and the creamsicle shake afterward was downright special.

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Never been to the Sol Duc part of Olympic National Park before. Now I have. Was pretty, the waterfall was unusual, and the weather was rainy.  I kind of prefer the spelling of droughth with the h at the end. Should’ve used it in the title.

We camped out by the rain forest. Started raining during the night some time — which you sort of expect in a rain forest, I guess. Drove out of there and tried — nearly failed — to get breakfast in Forks. We were, though, able to verify that the town’s economy is still mostly Twilight-based. If only the author had visited before writing the books. So lame.

The hike up to Sol Duc falls was only 0.9 miles from the trailhead, well within tourist range, even with the rain. But on the plus side, it was the first time all trip I got to break out my rain gear, which is really good at keeping rain out. Which you’d think would be true of all rain gear, but alas.

Highway 101 at 12:11:16 on August 10th.

Sol Duc Falls, with impressive triple-cascade action!

You know it’s a tourist when he’s carrying a golf umbrella onto the trail.

And then the loch ness monster came and ate our car.

I guess they’d had a long droughth up here. And it’s not that hard for me to look back at my 106-degree Yosemite photos and think about the two averaging out.

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With the truck still laid up, my dad was kind enough to let my brother and me borrow his Jeep and head out to Olympic National Park, which we now know was almost named Elk National Park. We didn’t see any elk or Greek gods while we were there, though. Maybe they should have gone with Option C.

I wanted to do this hike along the Hoh River in the Hoh Rain Forest, supposedly the greatest example of a temperate rain forest on earth. There were no toucans in the rain forest or three-toed sloths. Just a lot of trees and moss. Some rain. Went on it with my brother and three nephews with the goal being Five Mile Island (10 miles round-trip if you can believe it).

The rain forest is probably cooler than these pictures make it look, although I had fun trying to re-correct the colors in the photos to match my perception of reality.

And then the fairies came and performed a merry jig.

Still not sure whether the trees like having the mosses and ferns growing on them.

This one, for instance, seems a little irritated. Or maybe I’m reading too much into it.

Sam and Rick negotiate a deceptively difficult portion of trail.

What the trail looks like. Sort of. Depending on your monitor.

Mineral Creek Falls

A treacherous stream crossing.

We found troll scats under this bridge.

And then we saw a tree!

The Hoh River at Five Mile Island. Sadly, we witnessed no nuclear melt downs — heck, we couldn’t even find the containment facility (although that might have just been more evidence of failsafes working as designed).

Proof I was there.

Only one of my nephews (Ammon) and zero of my brothers made it to the island, and not without getting eaten alive by deerflies first, which only added to the richness of the experience — for both of us, really. Plus I got to use my first-aid kit for something. Finally.

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I understand no one cares about this quite as much as I do, but whatever: it’s pertinent to the trip. I gave the go-ahead today for the transmission place to start work. Hopefully they’ll have it done by the end of this week so I can pick it up either Saturday morning (I’d have to talk someone else into foregoing the Skagit River Jungle Cruise so I could get a ride) or Monday morning (in which case I’m cutting into the trip itinerary by a day). We’ll see how it goes.

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After St. Helens, started driving back to my parents’ house. Got to Olympia, trying to accelerate uphill on the 5 and the engine just revved, nothing else. Had enough speed and space to get over to the shoulder where it became clear that the transmission wasn’t, like, working.

And it’s still not.

But on the plus side, at least my hazard lights work!

Fortunately I have AAA, so it got towed for free. Turns out that the transmission coolant line burst, which caused the failure. Cheap enough to replace the line, but it also turned out (I found out today) that the transmission burned up in the meantime. I’ll call around and get some more estimates on Monday, but the AAMCO place quoted me about $2K, assuming they don’t find any more problems once they get going on it.

The cost sucks, obviously, but I’m mostly just down on not knowing when they’re going to have it fixed and not having any way of influencing, well, anything. Was supposed to be at the family reunion up here through Sunday anyway, so maybe it all gets done by then and it’ll be almost like nothing ever happened. Then again, they could “find” more problems during the work they’re doing and… who knows? Meanwhile, I’m stranded at my parents’ house. It’s a good place to be stranded, no doubt, but I guess I’m just used to having my fate in my own hands.

Oh, and there are no rental cars available in the Seattle area until Monday, at which point they’re $65/day (?!). And the screen I brought on the trip for my XBox has cracked and therefore useless.

I dunno. Maybe I’ll head out to the Olympics tomorrow with my brother and nephews (if I can find a car to borrow), or maybe not.

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I’m almost over taking recommendations from Backpacker magazine. Sure, they recommended the Glen Alpine Trail that was outstanding and all that, but they also suggested that Crystal Peak is the one and only hike at Rainier that’s “Top 100”-caliber.

That said, they can’t account for weather. I’m going to go back and do the Harry’s Ridge trail some time in the future. Some time when you can see the mountain and it’s not going to start raining on the trail’s six-inch ledges at any second. Some time.

As it was, I only did half the hike. It’s supposed to be an 8-miler, but I cut it off at the promontory so I could crawl back over the ledge before it got wet. As far as photos go, this is what I got:

Riffe Lake, along one of the mythical, plentiful routes to Spirit Lake Highway that my GPS (erroneously) thinks exists.

A mountain flowed through it: the Toutle River, pathway of mudflows. Not that anyone cares about some eruption that happened 29 years ago, though. Apparently.

The Boundary Trail: wildflowers, ash-filled desolation, low clouds.

I have to figure out what the problem is with these photos. Either Aperture isn’t exporting them with corrections made or else Firefox isn’t down-scaling them well. This is a photo of the ledge-crawl part of the trail, just FYI.

I figure I need to show a photo of the mountain, such as it was visible.

And then it turned out that the world’s foremost cobbler restaurant was out of business.

I like St. Helens, I really need to go back on a better weather day. People seem like they’ve forgotten about this place. Many of the businesses that grew up after the 1980 eruption were shuttered and/or for sale and, you know, I kind of like seeing dilapidated buildings and other such ruins. Wasn’t much traffic on the way out there and only a few people were bothering to hike the one trail. Except for the weather — and who knew it could be cloudy in Washington?! — probably pretty nice.

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It’s like I can’t come up with decent headlines whenever my truck is having its transmission worked on. Tomorrow’s another day. My apologies in the meantime.

After pre-selecting a campground on a map at which to meet my parents the next day, I then entered T-Mobile-induced radio silence, knowing that we’d meet at that campground at 6:30 PM the next day. Turns out the campground didn’t exist any more, so we ended up just running into each other at a gas station in Packwood. It’s a good thing there aren’t many places to get lost when you’re on mountain highways.

Then we went fishing. Some guy at some store in Packwood suggested a place called Chambers Lake based on its being full of fish *and* not having any too-weird restrictions on it (most of the lakes in the area wouldn’t allow treble hooks or bait — as if it’s possible to get artificial lures without treble hooks). Unfortunately, the direct, 17-mile road from Packwood to Chambers Lake was closed for “construction”, so to reach it we had to drive 20 miles to Randle, and then 40 miles through the woods. Not that it was presented to us in those terms, but whatever.

My dad, casting.

Me, doing same.

There weren’t a lot of fish in the lake as it turns out. My dad caught one and had another strike and then we saw an osprey come down and catch one, which was also interesting for watching him have to circle around several times before he could get off the ground far enough to fly away with the added weight of late lunch.

Was cool, though, to get some use out of the fishing gear and some knowledge transfer about casting and rat’s nest management. Plus the lake was pretty, small, and uncrowded.

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Wanted to post some more photos from the drive around Mt. Rainier. I think it’s the kind of place that should seem otherworldly if you’re not from here. Maybe someone can let me know.

For instance, I’m pretty sure this view never happens in California. This is heading toward the mountain, driving between Auburn and Enumclaw.

This is the road heading west toward the Paradise Lodge inside the park. Tree tunnels don’t happen much in Orange Countay (sic).

Box Canyon, a canyon with water in it.

View of Mt. Rainier from the side of the road, across Reflection Lake. With wildflowers.

How bees do business.

Narada Falls — I enjoy the photo for its complete lack of perspective.

Nisqually River tributary wannabes.

My attempt at a Chadley photo.

It’s a pretty cool drive. At some point I’ll make a list of my favorite stretches of road on the trip and this one’s got a good shot of being on there. Fierce competition.

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Mt. Rainier is fantastic and wonderful. So are views of it. Hiking steep switchbacks through a prison of douglas firs is less fantastic. It’s hard to tell how it balances out. Ah well.

The hike has fantastic views of Mt. Rainier and, eventually, views of Mt. Adams, Crystal Lake, and what might be Glacier Peak. It’s hard work staying motivated up the dumb switchbacks, though. And then once you get above the treeline and can see stuff, it’s really just the same view of the same stuff the whole way. It’s a nice view, just: you know.

Sneaking up behind a sitting dog, putting a rope around its neck, and pulling is NOT allowed on this trail. Which pretty much killed the day for me right there.

A rockslide! Well, better tank up.

Think forest fires are good for the forest? Tell it to *these* trees. Obama should do something about this — we need forest fires where no trees are actually burned.

A wall of trees.

Mt. Rainier with the European-American River in foreground.

Wildflowers along the trail.

The final assault.

From the top, looking down.

View of Mt. Adams from the peak.

A final look at Mt. Rainier — I like the parallell between the river and the trail, although it would’ve looked better with better light on the grass. Oh. Well.

Right, so: I dunno. The views were great — probably better than anything above illustrates. It’s also never a bad thing to stand on top of a mountain peak (at least, not in my book). Plus, since the trailhead isn’t that close to the “usual” park parts, the only people on the trail are those who mean to be there, and there aren’t very many of those types of people.

So it has those things going for it. I think there are some better hikes at Rainier, though — the Burroughs Mountain Trail, for instance, is 7-8 miles long (IIRC) and offers a lot more in the way of changes of scenery. Of course, since it starts from the Sunrise Lodge, it’s a lot more crowded. But anyway. This isn’t the last time I’ll ever be at Rainier (probably), so I’m guessing at the end of the day it will have been worth it to have checked this trail out at some point (was that the question?).

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By Monday my stomach was mostly done gurgling, so I headed back out toward Mt. Rainier. I’ve driven (or more frequently been driven) out that way many, many times in my life, a lot of them on the way to go skiing at Crystal Mountain when I was a kid. Always wanted to spend some quality time with the White River that flows along the highway and thus took the opportunity.

It’s prose like that that keeps you coming back to the site. Admit it.

Meh:

It’s more dishwater-brown than white, but you can kind of see what they were getting at. The sand on the beach to the left there is made of glacier silt and very, very soft.

The river collects trees like a person might collect, I dunno, antique rifles?

The Dalles Campground includes this 700-year-old douglas fir tree.

The view out the back of my living quarters as the sun goes down. It’s kind of cool falling asleep to the sound of a river just outside your truck window.

Some day I’m going to put together a review of campgrounds I’ve visited. The Dalles campground will probably fare well. It cost $18 for this “premium campsite” (premium because it backed up to the river), which was $2 more than the other campsites. But the vault toilet was well-tended and smelled all right, it wasn’t too big a campground to start with, weren’t many neighbors, and the bugs didn’t seem to like being there.

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