Alder Lake is a pretty place, run by the Tacoma Light company. It is out in the middle of nowhere Washington, but on the way to Mount Rainier. The nearest town is called Eatonville (with a nice small laundromat – BTW) and another tiny one called Elbe. There were several small campgrounds around the lake, and it seems very popular for fishing and boating. For 2 days, we were the only non-Washingtonians in the campground. It also seemed that several families/friend groups use this campground to meet up for a few days of camping together. Very green in this region…because it rains a lot. Again too early for summer it seems! We never did get to see either mountain, but we did go to the parks.
We went to Mount Rainier NP two different days. The first day we made it all the way to the visitor’s center – where it was 31F, snowing and windy. FREEZING!!! Naturally, there was no view of the mountain. We ended up not really even hiking because even at the bottom, it was below 40F and raining. The second day we went, it was still very foggy and cloudy around the mountain, but we did do a little hiking to the headwaters of the Nasqually River. That is a rocky river bottom and you can see where the high water marks are by the huge damage caused at those times. Boulders strewn across the river sides and bottom.
In between the Rainier days, we drove to the Mount St Helens visitor Center. We knew the Johnson overlook had been washed out, so we tried the Windy Observation center. It was also closed due to a mudslide (!) so we stopped in Morton at an IGA, and found HUCKLEBERRY Bread made by the Franz bakery. SO GOOOOD!
After we went back to the campground for lunch, we decided to try again. So we drove to the Washington State visitor’s center at MSH and found out that the new Science and Learning center was open, and fairly close to the observation towers. We drove up that road and got some nice views of the wash out/blowout areas including the Toutle River and the sediment catch basin there. But the mountain itself was covered in clouds. We could see the lower crest of the crater below the clouds.
Overall, this part of our trip was sort of a washout (no pun intended – sort of) but we did get some relaxation in and our legs got a rest.