On Tuesday we crossed into Washington State and pulled into the rather fancy state capitol building in Olympia to check things out.

Washington’s face was stamped onto everything, including the door handle in the bathroom. Which turned out to be the highlight of our visit, which included a tour we took shortly after I used the bathroom.

Patriotic

We drove on towards Tacoma, which is near where we would be staying with Andrew’s aunt Leslie. We drove over a hill and all of a sudden:

What

Would you get a load of this mountain?!

Absurd

All of a sudden Oregon’s mountains seemed teeny tiny (sorry Oregon) next to mighty Mt Rainier. These cows near Leslie’s house had one of the best views around:

Not that they were bothering to look.

Are we in Switzerland?

Unfortunately the next day our run of spectacular blue skies ended so my photos of Mt Rainier up close aren’t that great.

Dat snow though

We took a hike to Frozen Lake.

Which wasn’t entirely frozen, but that’s ok.

Andrew very kindly bought me some hiking poles from REI to make hiking less awful more comfortable and I was the only person at Mt Rainier under 70 using them. I have no idea why, since they are clearly so cool.

Majestic

We decided to head up a different path to see if we could get a better view of the peak, along the way we saw this sign:

Damn, must have left it in my other handbag…

“Yeah…nah…”

As we were deciding whether to cross, Meagan and LA, sisters from Florida, came side stepping down the snow, clinging to the ice and told us it was one of the scariest things they had ever done. And they are far more experienced hikers than I (although that’s not hard).

So we turned back and chatted to them along the path and swapped details so we could catch up with them in Jacksonville. Excellent! LA also showed me how to take selfies on a GoPro, which I stupidly didn’t know how to do. Life changing.

Us with LA and Meagan (stole this pic from Meagan’s instagram)

We hiked on, back towards where we parked at Sunrise Lodge.

More dirty snow

Check out the colour of that lake!

See?

Sunrise Lodge

A great hike, approximately 8km. I like you Washington.

Quick map update: the exciting news is I’ve had to zoom out to fit it all in because we’ve almost covered one side of the country! The not so exciting news is the Google Maps won’t let me put more than 11 destinations in, so I’ve skimmed over a few places.

Check it out: