Mt. Rainier National Park

A light saying, "Maintenance required" lit up on my dashboard and made me nervous, so I drove to Yakima, WA, the nearest large town on my route to Mt. Rainier and found a Toyota dealer. In Philadelphia I would have had to wait a few days for an appointment and then paid a couple hundred dollars. Here a very polite and helpful gentleman told me that a 5000 mile checkup including oil and filter change and tire rotation would cost me about $60.00 and would take about an hour and a half because there were other people ahead of me. In addition, for no extra charge, he drew me a map to the best campground in Mt. Rainier National Park - what a deal!

The scenery on the drive through the mountains to the park was magnificent. On one side of the mountain, the slopes were brown with just occasional patches of green bushes. On the other side the slopes were green with fir trees. I read that rain clouds blowing east from the Pacific drop their water when they reach these mountains, so there is a lot of rain on one side of the mountains but very little on the other.

I treated myself to a good dinner of liver and onions, mashed potatoes and a salad at the Drift Inn Restaurant and shortly afterwards took a good nap in the car for almost an hour at a roadside pulloff. I don't like to miss my afternoon nap - especially when I'm driving.

When I reached Mt. Rainier, they were doing roadwork and I had to wait for a "pilot car" to lead waiting cars down the one lane that was open. While I was waiting, I chatted with the young lady who was holding the stop/slow sign and she explained exactly what they were doing to the road. Every two years they resurface it so that they won't have to tear up and rebuild the whole road. Working in quarter-mile sections, they lay down a layer of oil on top of the present road and then drop a layer of gravel on top of the oil - all with big machines. Then a steamroller presses the gravel into the oil to make a solid surface.

I found the campground that the car dealer had recommended, and I think I got the last of the available sites in the park. I think this site was still available because although there was a post with a site number in front of a parking space, there was no apparent table or fire circle, so it didn't really look like a campsite.  Since the park was pretty cold,  I had already decided anyway that I would just sleep in the car, so I pulled into the space. When I pulled in, I noticed a small footpath leading through some trees to where there was a table and fire ring - just like at a real campsite.
I just hung out and read for a couple hours, cooked myself a spaghetti dinner, and then went to an evening program by a park ranger at the outdoor amphitheater on the topic of interacting with wild animals in the park. I didn't learn that much new, but the ranger had some good slides and made his presentation interesting, so that was fine. The temperature was somewhere in the forties, so I took my sleeping bag along and wrapped myself in it. Not especially aesthetic, but I do not like to be cold!