Afterthoughts about Goin’ West 2014
This is the map of my 16-day, Goin’ West 2014 trip: This surpassed my previously longest car trip from Grinnell to Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada, by a whole 17 miles!! I stuck pretty closely to my original route, with some new additions–especially Little Bighorn National Park and North Cascades National Highway–and only two major deletions. After the magnificence of Yellowstone, I didn’t feel the need to deviate 250 miles from my westward trip to see Glacier National Park in Montana, although I’d heard many wonderful things about it. I also didn’t cross into Canada to visit Vancouver. The trip included visits to seven national parks: Little Bighorn (Montana), Yellowstone (Wyoming), North Cascade, Olympic, and Mount Rainier (Washington State), Redwood, and Yosemite (California). The parks were fantastic and more than worth the cost of the annual season pass. My favorites were Redwood and Yosemite, but none disappointed. There were other parks…
Day 8: When It Rainier(s), It Pours
Saturday morning, but I got off to an early start in the hope of beating the crowd into Mt. Rainier National Park. First things, first, though. I discovered you don’t enter one of these parks low on gas. There’s usually no gas station inside, and you can potentially be miles away from one. So, I gave RB a half-tank (at $4.16 a gallon, I wasn’t going to fill her up). (A side note: when I left Des Moines, I filled RB up at a gas station that charged $3.39 a gallon. It’s going to be a long time before I complain about our prices again!!!) Mt. Rainier is HUGE. Much of it seems to be geared to the climber and the hiker, but there is plenty of roadway for the auto tourist. The red lined route I drove is below, going from the yellow highlight on the left to the…