Road trip: Seattle to Portland

This portion of the road trip had been altered several times - originally we were supposed to go to Olympic National Park, but after a lot of research I decided that we simply didn't have enough time to do it all. So we took the sensible route to Portland with a lot less driving with stops at Mt Rainier National Park, Mount St. Helen's and Columbia River Gorge. One day we'll make it to Olympic National Park!

We had a bit of a unlucky start to the day when we picked up the rental car - the USA map had been wiped from our GPS, so we had to make a quick detour to Walmart to pick up a new one. With that situation rectified and some late breakfast from Panera we made it to Mt Rainier to find no parking! We must have parked a mile from where we wanted to be on the side of the road and walked all the way back to the visitor's centre. But we made it. And it was beautiful. Even though the wildflowers were a little past their prime.

Mt St. Helen's was good, but the highlight was definitely Columbia River Gorge. It's kind of how you picture Oregon in the summer - green trees everywhere,  a huge river with everyone swimming in it and waterfalls as tall as the eye can see.