a mountain of fire and ice!

MT. RAINIER!
Snow still around mid July?
Jordan surprised me and took me to Mt. Rainier on Friday! He didn't tell me until we were practically pulling into the park. What an awesome, loving, dear husband I have. He makes my every day great great great!
Mt. Rainier is a spectacular place and with snow still around it makes this year especially special. One of the gentleman at the help desk was telling us that it is easier right now to use snowshoes or cross country skis at Paradise (name of the last parking location you can park at before all you do is hike up to the top of Rainier) to trek up close to the mountain unless you want to use the mountain climbers’ snowy boot trail up to Camp Muir which let me tell you is very slippery and unless you have a stick or pole becomes very slow....LOL...Jordan and I would have loved to have trekked using snowshoes! They said that as of July 15th the mountain at 5 feet of snow! To say the least this snowy situation at Mt. Rainier has brought forth some addictive behavior in Jordan and I. We could really see our car being seen constantly heading back into the park to check out all the different climates and changes all year round if we lived here. I find myself wanting to go back there today and tomorrow and the next! I want to see Reflection Lake on the west side and Tipsoo Lake on the east side for I hear they are a site to see. I loved Adler lake as it was the bluest and greenest lake I had ever seen! I just wanted to hop out of the car and dive head first. It took our breath away at every site we saw but how wonderful it would have been to have binoculars! From the drive to the hike it was something I will never forget. Heavenly Father is extremely a beautiful soul to create something of such beauty.
I only put of a few pics as I will be posting more later on the blog as well as a slide show.
These photo's were taken on our drive up to Paradise stop

a few waterfalls we stopped to admire

the left side of Mt. Rainier: landscape

while on the trail we just loved being together and wanted to hug nature! LOL...you see the clouds are starting to settle down the mountain as the evening approaches.



Here I crawled inside of a rock that was just sitting on the side...I felt as though it was lonely so I wanted to enjoy it and give some warmth.

Here as you can see we were just tasting a bit of the snow and trying to build snowballs that would eventually be thrown at each other :-)

Here we had a ranger and his wife take a picture of us making some snow angels. How fun it was to be a kids again...at the far right can you see his first and then mine?

we got a bit wet but NOT WET ENOUGH in my opinion :-) doesn't my hubby have the best bod ever! (wink/blush).

I'll publish a slide show later on! miss and love you all and I think that with friends and family we should all make some serious plans to go camping here in the future! What do you say?!