My contract at Boeing ended yesterday. Today we left home in Puyallup, Washington for the first stage of the new adventure that takes us east to Burnsville, Minnesota to see our oldest daughter and her husband.

Today we travelled from Puyallup to Kennewick, Washington to spend the weekend with Nikki’s mom.

It started out cool on the western half of the state, but once we got as far east as Cle Elum, it started getting warm. At the Selah Rest Area on I-82, we had perfectly clear views of both Mt. Adams and Mt. Rainier.

Once we got here, we realized we forgot our passports. Since we plan to be living in the motorhome for six to nine months, partly in the south near the Mexican border, we need to have those passports. So our son is sending them ahead to us.

Tags: Full-timing, Mexico, Minnesota, Motorhomes, Mt. Rainier, RVing by john
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This image shows just how far down the Cascade Range you can see from Paradise.

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Saw this dead snag while snowshoeing.

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Looking to the southwest from Paradise on Mt. Rainier, you can see the Cascade range stretching for miles.

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The Tatoosh Range of mountains rises up across the Nisqually River to the south of Paradise. They are quite spectacular to see.

A Paradise Webcam points at the Tatoosh mountains, which give you a view here.

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As I mentioned Sunday afternoon, Paradise is one of the snowiest places on the planet. Not cold, necessarily, just gets a lot of snow; over 600 inches of snowfall in an average year. Of course, over the course of the winter, some of that melts, and it all packs down, so the depth isn’t that high. You can see in the picture below that the depth on Sunday morning was just about 15 feet.

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My boss arranged for the group, and family members, to go up to Paradise on Mt. Rainier today. The weather couldn’t have been more perfect. With all the cool nasty weather this winter, the road to Paradise was closed for something like 10 days, after getting 13 feet of snow in 10 days or so starting January 29th.

Today the sun came out the mountain stayed mostly visible, along with the other Cascade mountains in the area. They currently have 15 feet of snow on the ground at Paradise where they measure the snowpack. Of all the places in the world, Paradise held the record of most snowfall in a season until 1999, when Mt. Baker beat them.

Nikki got some good pictures that I will post over the next few days. We’ll start with this one from the parking lot at Paradise just before we started home.

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Tags: Mt. Rainier, Photography, Snowshoeing, Washington by john
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