Mt. Rainier

Adam and I did a three day, 35 mile backpacking trip for our 3 month anniversary!

We did the Northern Loop Trail, part of the Wonderland Trail that circles Mt. Rainier, our local volcano.
Here we are at the start with Mt. Rainier in the background:

And here we are at the end:

It was so great to be out in the forest and on the trail with Adam. We've been working in an office/lab for far too long.

Our home for the night:


Adam is a master lightweight backpacker. He got our pack weight to around 20 pounds each (he carried our sleeping gear, and I carried our food and water). This is our tarp (like a tent), ground cloth, sleeping pads, and our homemade double sleeping bag (more on our homemade bag to come).


We saw meadows brimming with wildflowers, high country lakes and streams, rocky mountain peaks, foggy forests with slime molds and parasitic plants, glaciers, and few mean mosquitoes.


(we bathed in that lake!)
(can you see Adam in this fog?!)


(Orobanchia, a chlorophyll-lacking plant that feeds off a fungus that feeds off a conifer tree)

(a strange lichen)

(a slime mold?)


(I thought those red, fungi-like organisms above were slime molds...but they are collembola, some kind of bug! hahaha!)









(a marmot!!! so cute!)