Sunrise at Mt. Rainier National Park

It was gorgeous, so I decided to take advantage of it and do a little hiking and grabbed a friend and off we went to Sunrise, which is a part of Mt. Rainier National Park.

After driving for what seemed like forever we finally hit Sunrise Point, which is a 360 degree lookout of mountains.

Then we drove the rest of the way up and stopped at the Sunrise information center/ gift shop/ and cafe.  We had lunch over looking Mt. Rainier.

Then we headed out on a trail.  Our goal was to hit Frozen Lake, which isn't all the way frozen and then head down over to Shadow Lake and back to Sunrise.  The first part was super steep and we were up walking on Sourdough Rim/Ridge which was all dirt and big pieces of moving shale.  One side of the trail was straight up the mountain, the other side gave us views of the wonderful valley below.

We made it to Frozen Lake, which is the water they use in the gift shop/ cafe/ and bathrooms at the lodge.

Took time for a photo op.

Then started walking some more and headed down into the valley to find Shadow Lake.

As we were walking down, we found that the trail lead us to cross many glaciers, which was slightly scary.  I even took a short part of it on my bum.  If you look really close, you can see the bum mark on the snow.  The trail started up at the top of the picture where the rocks are.

We walked over another trail through the glacier and then through some glorious fields of wildflowers. We found a spot where you could camp and then finally made it to Shadow Lake where we were greeted with a surprise. (tune in tomorrow to see what it was!)
We headed home the same way we came.

What an amazing day! Especially when the next day was full of thunderstorms and lightening.