R and J in the USA

After picking Ryan up at Sea-Tac Airport, we swung by Matt and Laura’s again to take advantage of their generosity and use them for their facilities and maintenance. We dumped our compost in their compost bin, emptied the recycling, filled up the fresh water, drained the grey water tank, and hit the road for Mount Rainier National Park.

Ryan had been before. Julie had not. The Sunrise Visitors Center that was more in line with our shortest driving route was already closed for the season, so we rerouted to Paradise, and had no trouble making the choice with a name like that. 

The name is not too much. Once you get there, you get it.

We grabbed a campsite at Cougar Rock Campground and fell asleep with the van once again fully armed for mouse battle. You can read more about our mouse adventures in our Life on the Road section.

Despite our ongoing critter dramas, our enjoyment of the area and the day was not the slightest bit encumbered. We had PERFECT fall weather in Paradise to make a go at the steep trails surrounding the base of the famed 14,000-footer amidst its glowing alpine meadows. 

The debate of hike versus walk got rocky as we ascended the steepest trail we had yet conquered on the trip at the base of one of the biggest mountains in the lower 48 and the highest mountain in Washington. Julie asserted that it was a no-brainer that this one counted as a hike, both instinctively and according to our new rubric theory. But Ryan wasn’t submitting so easily to such a classification. You see, the beginning of the trail was a paved pathway. Not a cleared one, a paved one. Ryan felt that a paved pathway was like entering a zero into a multiplication equation and no matter what other factors were present – the setting, the view, the strenuousness, the elevation – the paved walkway turned the whole equation to zero and he just couldn’t stomach calling it a hike. Julie took umbrage and refused to call this ascension up Mount Rainier that had her huffing and puffing, hands on her hips in the universal sign of “this is taxing”, a “walk”. 

“You don’t have to stop to catch your breath on a walk!” Julie exclaimed vigorously.

”Sure you do.” Ryan rebutted, feeling that his assertion was sufficient reasoning to claim the point.

The debate was on.

After a while, Ryan figured out the core issue. 

“Oh. I see what’s happening here.” He said, “It’s a simple confusion. You are viewing this as a difference in opinion, when in reality it’s just that I’m right and you don’t realize that you are wrong.”

”Oh!” Julie replied, relieved to have this figured out. “Well, there you have it. We’ve found the bottleneck. That is exactly true. I was operating under the delusion that I was right.”

Eventually Julie settled into this difference in perspective fitting nicely into the subjective element of the rubric where we talk about personal context. (If you are not sure what we are referencing, you can read about our thoughts about Hiking vs. Walking in our Ruminations section) For Ryan, a paved pathway was a deal-breaker. For Julie, it was just one factor that inputted into the rubric just like everything else and, up against the fact that so many other factors were present in the extreme, it was a no-brainer that it was a hike. At the same time, Julie could imagine where her subjective zero point would be. If everything was the same except we were walking up this steep incline in the parking lot of the visitors center, that would zero things out for Julie. Ryan’s line was just a touch closer in. This is the subjective part. Ryan was not satisfied about the idea of our rubric having subjective elements and so the debate raged on in this new direction.

Since Julie ultimately ended up deciding to re-embrace her prior delusions of “righthood”, we ended up needing to agree to disagree and agree to continue ruminating in future conversations. This is the kind of annoying banter and behavior we find fun.  

Regardless, when the paved walkway ended and the trail continued with a bit more rockiness and dirt, Ryan now happily settled into our mutually classified “hike”. 

The view of Mount Rainier right there in front of us, with its icy glacier snaking down through its crevices and the bright colors of it’s alpine meadow framing it and mountains in the views behind us – it was just one of those moments where, in the midst of all of this activity, it’s hard not to feel how special it all is – this moment and the whole trip.

Ryan turned to Julie with a big stinking smile of pure joy on his face. “Happy 50 States Tour, Baby.”

”You too, Baby,” Julie smiled back. It was a nice moment.

As we headed back on the road, the feelings only deepened, sinking in even more as we twisted and turned along the road through this land of nature’s wonders.

“I can’t believe we get to do this,” Julie said. “I can’t believe all the places that I get to have memories of sitting inside of my mind. Even though we don’t get lots of time in each place in the moment, I feel such a big expanse of time that I get to have the pictures and sights and smells of it all in my mind that I can just sit in anytime and for the rest of my life.”

”Yeah,” Ryan said. “It’s pretty cool.”

After leaving Paradise and exiting the park into the National Forest, we found ourselves in a neat wild goose chase thanks to Google falsely redirecting us to avoid a nonexistent road closure. It was a happy misuse of time as we got to see campgrounds and lakes we wouldn’t have otherwise seen and drive past an adorable group of kids on a field trip that we passed by on a bridge. They all thanked us as we drove by. We weren’t exactly sure what they were thanking us for – maybe the fact that we waited for them all to get to the side of the bridge to avoid running them over, though that hardly seemed worthy of gratitude, but it was neat to see the wonder and joy on their faces. 

Sometimes it’s just neat to see something and that’s enough to feel gratitude. Maybe that’s what they were thankful for. We certainly could relate to that.

Now we were on our longest drive of the trip so far, headed back eastward toward Spokane for our 5K in the morning, which you can read about in our 5K section. In Julie’s research, she had seen that there was supposed to be the World’s Largest Lava Lamp in a little town called Soap Lake and we headed right for it. When we arrived in Soap Lake, we were fascinated and taken in by this little town in east Washington that was equal parts gorgeous in its natural setting and strikingly quiet and empty in its village center. We wondered if this town was like Eldon, IA – quiet and even a bit run down looking on the outside, but filled with vibrant community members that loved the life they had here. We didn’t know, but we stopped to take in the mineral rich shores of Soap Lake and enjoy a playground that had not received an update since the late 1970’s, we were guessing. We both hopped on the merry-go-round and found they were just as fun as we remembered.

We hopped back in the car and finished the final two hours of the drive to our campground at Riverside State Park’s Bowl and Pitcher area. It was too dark to see the beauty of the river, but we knew it was there. After cooking up some more ramen, we settled in for the night, whooped from a full day of steep walking/hiking and long drives. 

We slept through the night uninterrupted by mouse sounds or deaths, then woke to make our way to the Bridge to Brunch 5K on a beautiful sunny October morning.

Washington, we feel we’ve only scratched the surface of you, but, big surprise, we’ve loved every minute and are quite certain we’ll make it back out this way again.