Chapter 9: Man Plans, God Laughs
We get up early, we do rope drop, we drive crazy long distances so we can have shared experiences that we remember forever. When we travel to national parks, we’re looking for those awe-inspiring views that make our jaws drop in wonder. There are certain sights we’ve experienced over the years that are etched permanently in my brain, that make me feel that full grandeur and majesty of God’s creation, with gratitude for having the chance to have witnessed it. For example, I’ll never forget driving through the tunnel that led to Yosemite Valley. The way that view opened up before my eyes was a magical experience. The thrill of that kind of discovery makes me want to continue seeking it more and more.
We were up early, trying to be the tourist crowds to the main visitor center at
Mount Rainier National Park. Like Glacier, this is a park that is mostly full in summer, and the parking lot can be filled to capacity by mid-morning. The main visitor center (Henry M. Jackson Memorial Visitor Center) doesn’t open until 10:00 a.m., but the parking lot will easily be over half full with day-hikers by then.
The drive from Packwood was slow, as we had to wind our way up endless narrow switchbacks to climb the mountain slopes. Again, we do these drives willingly. As I keep telling the kids, if you want to see the amazing sights, you have to do the work to get there. The payoff is always worth the effort.
Nearly an hour into our drive, the road flattened out a bit and we came to a parking lot near Reflection Lake. This is one of the more famous overlooks in the park, because if the conditions are right, you can often get a perfect reflection of Mt. Rainier on the surface of the lake as the real mountain towers in the background. Once again, rope drop worked like a charm. We’d beaten the crowds and had no issue finding a parking space. We’d spent all that money. We’d driven all this way. We’d gotten up early. Now we could reap the reward.
Behold…the glorious, spellbinding majesty of Mount Rainier.
Gets you right in the feels, doesn’t it?
Everywhere we looked, it was as though we’d caught a glimpse of heaven on earth.
In fact, maybe we had. This, in every way imaginable, was truly paradise.
I know that because the sign said so.
If I had helicoptered you in there and dropped you off, that sign would have been the only indication you were in a national park or that there was a mountain nearby. This morning turned out to be a bust.
We stopped at the visitor center, which wasn’t open yet (curse you, Rope Drop!). So we decided to try a short hike to Myrtle Falls. Hopefully the waterfall would be visible, at least.
Thankfully, it was.
If the sun had been out, we’d be treated to lush meadows full of wildflowers and a stunning, larger-than-life mountain peak as a backdrop. Instead, we had a nice little stream.
When the visitor center opened, we wandered through the exhibits and just spent the morning working through the Junior Ranger workbook and earning his badge. But clearly it wasn’t going to be worth spending the entire day in the park, as I had originally planned. So, we improvised.
We had our PB&J for a quick lunch in the parking lot and then set off for (hopefully) better weather. On the way out of the park, we stopped at another overlook for Narada Falls, which was definitely worth the time to stop.
It took a good bit of time to get back to civilization. Mount Rainier isn’t on any major roads, so we had to wind our way down through the forests to the west and then turn north towards Tacoma. Eventually we started driving through more and more developed areas before hitting some traffic, and then at long last finding our way to I-5 north towards Seattle.
We headed for the southern part of the city, where the
Museum of Flight is located. Seattle is home to the Boeing Corporation, and the museum I’m sure was at least partly funded by Boeing as it sits next to Boeing Field. It’s very similar to the Air & Space Museum in Washington, D.C. in that they have an incredible number of vintage historic aircraft on display in various hangars on the property. The 737 Max aircraft, however, is not on display.
We arrived at roughly 3:00 p.m., which was not ideal because the museum would be closing at 5:00. Still, I felt like 2 hours was better than nothing, so we went for it. As we approached the museum, however, I started to get a sinking feeling. We followed a line of cars and some workers directed us to the nearest available parking lot, which based on the amount of driving was located somewhere back in Tacoma. The place was absolutely packed.
It’s no secret that I do an insane amount of vacation planning, and I would love to push the narrative that I’m a genius trip planner working on a level far beyond that of mere mortals. But then I’d have to remind you of t
he day a couple of years ago when I had planned to take the family to the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, got stuck in all sorts of traffic at the entrance, panicked about the number of people there and worried that we wouldn’t be able to see anything, and then ended up blundering into witnessing a rocket launch that I had no idea was happening that day.
Sometimes, despite our cluelessness, we manage to stumble into good fortune that can only be described as a blind squirrel finding a nut.
I had no idea why the museum was so crowded that day, and again I started to panic that with only 2 hours, we wouldn’t be able to see anything and it would be a waste of money. I knew that there was a special traveling exhibit on display about the Apollo 11 moon landing—it even had the Apollo capsule on loan from the Smithsonian Institute—and so of course I was willing to pay the extra cost to go see that. But I was as shocked as anybody when we got to the ticket counter and paid for our admission, and the gate agent recommended we head straight to the airfield out back as the Blue Angels were about to take off on their practice run.
I had no idea the Blue Angels were even in Seattle. But, Paragraph (c) of Section 58 of Chapter 6 of the Oblivious Family Travel Handbook states that if you have an opportunity to see the Blue Angels fly, you must drop everything and go watch the Blue Angels fly.
This was just a practice run for an air show later on that week, but still! It’s so cool!
So that happened. Naturally, I took all of the credit for our being able to see it.
We speed-walked our way through the museum, trying to take in as much as we could. It’s spread out through at least 3 separate buildings on both sides of a street, so there’s a good bit of walking involved in order to see everything.
There’s the original Boeing factory building, where they first started building aircraft.
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