Mountains

Great Smoky Mountains National Park

Great Smoky Mountains National Park

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By the time I found about about this year’s solar eclipse, sometime last February-ish, the entire state of Oregon appeared to be booked already, so I looked along the path of totality for other interesting spots. I never made it out to Great Smoky Mountains NP when I lived in North Carolina, so seemed like a good time to correct that!

We spent several nights near the park, the first few in Townsend, TN. This was a great location just outside the park near Cade’s Cove, a rural valley that preserves some of the park’s settlements. There wasn’t too much in the way of concessions in Townsend, but it was definitely more my speed than Gatlinburg, a bustling tourist town sort of like a boardwalk in the mountains. We spent a morning driving the Cade’s Cove Loop, and stopping to look at the historic structures & mills, etc.

Great Smoky Mountains turned out to be an awesome park to visit with a toddler, but really would be great for anyone. On the not-so-toddler-friendly end of the spectrum, you could hike the Appalachian Trail, but for the under-two crowd, there are numerous “quiet pathways” and nature trails that are shorter in distance that still let you get out of the car and into nature. You don’t have to go far to find rivers, waterfalls, fun insects, and rocks to put down your shirt.

We had a few missed opportunities ~ here was the best sighting of a black bear we had (he’s in there, I swear!) and the view from Clingman’s Dome on the day we tried to hike that:

 

But the highlight of the trip was getting to see the total eclipse in Bryson City, NC. Dad had to go home early, so little guy and I stayed on our own a few nights. We had a great time riding the Great Smoky Mountains Railroad, throwing rocks in rivers, and watching the eclipse! If/when I go back to the park, I would definitely make Bryson City my base if not camping inside the park – we stayed at a little inn with great hospitality (including the other guests!), and the town has restaurants and shops to serve the park crowds without being overwhelmingly touristy like some of the towns in TN. As for the eclipse, it was totally worth traveling alone with a toddler, even with the unplanned overnight in Asheville due to aircraft maintenance ~ it was an amazing sight!

Mount Rainier NP

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mora-16

In September, we took a vacation up to the Seattle area and, of course, hit up some of the area’s National Parks. Glacier-covered Mount Rainier is the highest mountain in Washington (and an active volcano!). Even though we were there over Labor Day weekend, we still managed to get a room in the park for Sunday night, so off we went!

mora-24On Saturday, we drove down to Mt. St. Helens National Monument (managed by the U.S. Forest Service) and started our volcano viewing. Although Mt. St. Helens and Mt. Rainier don’t look too far on the map (and both are ~2-3 hours from Seattle), it takes some time to get between them as each mountain is quite a ways off I-5 and there’s no direct connector. However, it gave us a good opportunity to approach via the southern Stevens Canyon entrance station. The plan was to get a passport cancellation at the Ohanapecosh Visitor’s Center, but I didn’t realize that it was in the campground before the entrance station. By the time I realized my mistake, we didn’t feel like driving back out of the park – oh well. We did stop just inside the entrance to hike down to Silver Falls. This was a lovely little hike to a waterfall that even in September was still going pretty strong. We took the intermediate approach from the Grove of the Patriarchs trailhead (0.5-0.6 mi), but the falls can also be accessed via shorter or longer hike from Rte 123 or the campground.

After hiking down to the falls and back, we continued on to Paradise. We managed to get a few glimpses of the mountain on the road, but by the time we reached Reflection Lake for a photo op, the clouds had moved in. Once at Paradise, we had to take one big loop before finding parking (but don’t worry, the NPS is currently paving Paradise to put up a parking lot – or at least improve one), and more and more fog had moved in in the meantime. We had the dilemma of whether to hike to Myrtle Falls or take the Nisqually Vista Trail in spite of the clouds and fog. We decided to take our chances with the vista, thinking the clouds might clear, and if not, we still would get a nice walk. Well, it turned out to be the latter, but we still had an enjoyable walk through the subalpine trees and meadows, where we even were treated to some straggler spring/summer blooms and saw a pond full of tadpoles!

That night, we stayed in the National Park Inn in the Longmire Historic District. The cozy inn was your typical national park lodge, with a mix of rooms with and without bathrooms (ours ended up being shower only, so we still had to use the guest bath for the baby). Reading over the guest info, I learned what to do in case of lahar (volcanic mudslide). I somewhat doubted my ability to climb the 1000+ ft elevation trail across from the inn in the middle of the night to get to high ground in time, but luckily we didn’t have to test that hypothesis. In the morning, we collected my passport cancellation at the Longmire Museum and walked the short “Trail of the Shadows” interpretive loop around the meadow. The loop brings you past beaver dams and the original spring that spurred the settlement.

I believe there was another passport cancellation at the Nisqually entrance station, but the line of cars trying to get in discouraged us from looping back around on our way out – that’s two missed cancellations for this park!