Family Hike on Mt. Rainier

We told Josiah a few days earlier that this time we would be taking the WHOLE family to Mt. Rainier for a hike, and so this morning he packed his little backpack with his helicopters and airplanes to take up the mountain and got himself all dressed and ready to go even before being asked. You may not know this, but helicopters and airplanes ARE essential hiking tools....for a 4-year old. On the car ride up to the mountain, David loaded the mp3 player with Veggie Tales songs and we enjoyed singing along and laughing at the funny songs. I was pretty miserable in the morning due to allergies and was sort of zoned and out of it, but couldn't help but laugh and smile at the "Boyz in the Sink" song with the the lyric, "We got skills with grammar. Real good we think. We switch 'Z's' for 'S's.' We're the Boyz in the Sink!"

In the above shot, Caleb is showing how happy he was to be exploring and saying, "Ooooo." I wasn't able to go on the 1/2 mile hike with the crew because of my hip and because Naomi needed a feeding right when we got there. David said though that Caleb was just pleased as punch and was looking around saying, "Whoah" over and over again (especially at all the little waterfalls) and also whenever he saw a broken tree he would say, "Uh-oh," and when one of those standbys wasn't good enough, he would just squeal with delight! At the end of the hike, I met them in the parking lot and asked Caleb who was running toward me, "Did you have fun?" He stopped short and said with a big grin, "a hike!" David said he was gleefully saying, "Hiking, hiking," over and over too. Do you think we have a hiker here?

On the trail, they saw five deer and whenever they saw them the twins would wave and say, "Hi," to the deer. Last time Josiah and Daddy went on this trail (last Saturday), Josiah remembered some things he learned about stumps. David asked him if he wanted to sit on the stump and Josiah replied, "No there's ants that live in there." Josiah also dubbed a certain rock, "Slide Rock," due to it looking like a slide and proceeded to try and slide down the rock.

Here pictured is the crew (my parents included) at the "Old People's Bath" as Josiah calls it...otherwise known as the mineral springs where old people USED to come and bathe. In one of the videos David took, Caleb was leaning precariously over the edge of the pool trying to reach the water and nearly fell in and Daniel chose to touch the water in a more safe place where he could easily reach it. This is typical of our boys. Caleb tends to be our risk taker in new situations and Daniel is the more conservative, careful one.

Near the end of the trail they found the beaver tree that Josiah was a little scared of the last time, and as you can see here Caleb doesn't mind it at all. They tried to get Daniel to go near it, but his response was, "No risk!" Apparently, he has picked up on the fact that he is not a risk taker! Daniel also was really getting into reading the signs along the trail and towards the end would say, "What say?" as he pointed to them.

After the hike, we went to the visitor's center up at Paradise and I happened to notice this information about "Old Growth Heather" and decided to pose next to it for fun. When we were eating lunch downstairs (which is what we did first) Josiah was saying how he was "excited to see the different poops!" One of the displays had droppings of different animals that you could view (beneath plastic covers thankfully) and he was looking forward to showing them to the brothers. Miss Naomi took the honors for being the youngest "hiker" there I am sure, as I didn't see any other infant carseats around us at the visitor's center. I am sure we were a sight to all with all our little adventurers!

I wanted to share a shot of Josiah with his new hiking hat. It says "Mt. Rainier" on it and on the way home he was wearing it and asked me, "I'm glad you bought the Mountain Rainier hat. Do I look cute in it?" On the way home in the car, Daniel was looking at the snow banks and kept saying, "Noman? noman??" For those who don't translate Daniel-speak that is "snowman." We told him we wouldn't be making a "noman" this time! We ended up stopping in Elbe to get some ice cream that was served out of a train car. Their ONE scoop of ice cream was quite big, but delicious! The kids enjoyed walking around looking at the train cars also. It is actually an inn and you can stay in the various train cars!

Overall, we had a great time and it seemed my allergies weren't as acute on the mountain, but as soon as we were rolling into the Puyallup area again they started flaring up. It could be something in this area is really getting to me and/or the Benedryl I took just wore off and perhaps it would have been just as bad on the mountain without it. Who knows, but allergies are miserable and I wish they would go away! That aside, it was fun to take the whole family on our first big adventure together!