Day Eight | Oregon Plate, Mt. St. Helen, and off too Rainier

Annelies slept in the closet last night. For some reason she has been opposed to sleeping with Paradis on this trip. She says Paradis is creepy and Scott snores (which he does at times, but what does it matter if you are sleeping next to him or in the bed one foot away?). 

We woke to find this deer just ten feet from our room when the girls were headed to the pool. Crazy. The wildlife is a little too friendly around this part of the country, but we are enjoying it. 

We needed an Oregon license plate, so we stopped at an auto repair shop by our hotel. We met the owner, Chris Page, who although didn’t have a modern plate, had a bunch of antique plates hanging on his wall. He took one off and gave it to us! Again, no lie. He was excited to hear about our travels and simply asked that we ‘friend’ him on Facebook. Please take a minute to friend Mt. Hood Auto and Tire on Facebook! 

Off we went to Mount St. Helens. As we crossed the Oregon/Washington border there wasn’t a ‘Welcome to Washington’ sign. So we stopped at the first rest stop and got this one … my traveling team thought it would be funny to hold me horizontally. Lovely. 

Mount St. Helens was foggy when we first arrived (there was a small part of me that was glad we got to use the rain jackets we packed!), but the skies cleared on our way down the mountain. We found the history of the volcano eruption to be fascinating. We wished we could have stayed a little longer at the Visitor Center, but we only had a couple hours. It was interesting to hear about the volcano erupting in 1980 and how Mother Earth has adapted since. 

We decided to drive all the way to Mount Rainier so we could see the park right away in the morning. The distance is only twenty miles as the crow flies, but took us two hours getting through the mountain and across the rivers. The drive was enjoyable. 

We stayed at Rainier Overland, a small resort just a few miles from Mt. Rainier’s Nisqually Entrance. We are anxious for our last National Park visit tomorrow. Both girls will be flying home with a bag full of pins, Junior Ranger badges and their Passport books filled with stamps. We will spend the day in Seattle and then travel to Victoria Canada via the ferry before we fly out on Monday.

Day eight: 264 miles (2,495 total); $62.92 on gas ($352.44 total); $17.28 on souvenirs ($305.19 total); $16 tourist traps ($395.17 total); Two states (Six total); One Country (Two total); 1 fight (1 total); 1 injury (1 total).