lauralh | spray park loop

Spray Park (my pics) is one of the highest altitude meadows (aka "parks") at Mount Rainier National Park, less than two hours drive from the Seattle Metro area. Because of this, the flowers tend to appear late-July to early-August, and some of the snowfields at the edge between Spray and Seattle Parks don't ever melt out. It's not officially on the Wonderland Trail, but some people hike it instead as it is far more picturesque. Our loop was from Mowich Lake going to Spray Park, then up to where the WT meets the Carbon River, then back up the WT along Carbon River and Ipsut Creek up to Ipsut Pass, and back to Mowich Lake again. We started at 4900', went up to 6400', then down down down to 3200', then the next day down to 2400', and then UP UP UP to 5100'. Phew.

Pics:

It was sunny at first...

But the clouds moved in.

Same thing happened Sunday!

And then...

Oh well. If you do the WT in August and/or good weather at Mowich Lake, go via Spray Park. Otherwise just go north via Ipsut and burn out the miles.
Reg is kind of a picky eater, so we nearly always eat the same Mountain House Beef Stroganoff for dinner. This time I wanted to save a bit of money, so I got these instant mashed potatoes, and a high-fat Ramen variety. We also brought granola but preferred to eat our fruit/nut bars for breakfast. The taters were actually far too much food - we both got tired of them halfway through. I put some dried sausage in mine, but this is one of the foods he won't eat.

Fortunately I had remembered seeing a recipe for steaming muffins, and found a cheap mix of blueberry muffins that only required milk. So I measured and mixed the right amount of dry milk powder with muffin mix, put in ziploc bag (2 servings per night), and steamed them after dinner for dessert.

We also had a Ritter Sports Bar to share the second night, and for lunch mainly had cheese and crackers. Lots of different fruit/nut bars, probably not the lightest option but definitely the tastiest. Unfortunately, this was a lot more fiber than we're used to eating, so when we got home the er, atmosphere was less than pleasant.

So I think next time we'll just eat a lot of pizza for dinner.