As I mentioned yesterday, the sense of scale for mountains here in Washington is totally different than what I'm used to on the east coast. The mountains here seem to just spring up abruptly out of the ground. Plus, the mountains are much much bigger. The above picture is a good example - Mt. Rainier is so big it dominates the skyline south of Seattle. When I first saw it, I was totally stunned by how enormous it was compared to other mountains in the area - and I orginally tought those mountains were big compared to those I had seen back east.
A picture really can't do justice to capturing just how big this mountain really is. I had seen plenty of pictures of it before I came out here, but none of them prepared me for its massive presence when witnessed first-hand.
We have been having great luck with the weather - other than the first night when we arrived, it's been sunny all week. On Monday we went to Mt. Rainier park, got to experience some snow as we drove to a higher elevation portion of the park (Yay! Snow!), and got treated to a great view of Mt. Rainier along the way.
To try to give an idea of how big this mountain is, here's a zoom in on just a small piece of the mountain. Notice the clouds floating around it.
Oh, and we also saw a few large trees (for a sense of scale, note Jana standing next to the tree). Wowzers! That's a mighty big tree!
There is just way too much to write about and too many pictures I'd like to share. I'll have to save it for when I get back next week.
Note: as with almost all the pictures I post, you can click on them for a larger view...