beautyintheuniverse's video: Finding Paradise

Paradise is an aptly named region in Mount Rainier National Park. Also some messing around building dams, various timelapse and some pretty views of flowers and glaciers! :-) Monday 11th Aug 2009 Up early, picked up coffee in Packwood and headed for the south entrance. Decided to head out of the park to the West (every previous time ive been here Ive ended up going up North.. turned out to be a good call. Quite soon some very dramatic views of the volcano. Stopped at reflection lake, which dispite being ringed with trees would have been a good place to fly. I didnt on the account that firstly the mountains head was in the clouds and secondly there was an annoying (if small) amount of wind. Even more annoying as the plaque said the lake was usually mirror still at dawn. Set a timelapse up as it looked like the morning clouds would burn off. They didnt! But while I was figuring that out I amuzed myself building a little damn on the outflow of a stream flowing into the lake. The onto Paradise, and its namesake is pretty close to the mark. Called home, and had an edifying chat about volcanos with a ranger. Turns out I was wrong about the gas content of the cascades, its 95 % water! (I thought it was mostly CO2). Wandered around the paths in the back of Paradise for a couple of hours. Many places to fly, by both wind and clouds were building (even with all the people) gonna have to come back this way sometime. Eventually found myself wandering on some sidetrack down to a glacider. Very impressive with the half mile wide ice-stream flowing from under the cloud. Distance water fall gave the whole thing a sense of the massive.- impressive, very impressive. Headed down out of the park in mid afternoon. Picked up wifi to find the lady who had given me a studio mike wanted had responded to my invitation for a coffee. Stopped briefly at an open lake with a short land bridge to an island to fly, but no sooner had I assembled everything than a 20 mph wind got up ASS! When the phone sprang to life I called to arrange a time for coffee, and I hooked up with her and her friend for coffee in Tacoma. We had a pleasant chat about things but were booted out of the starbux (the backup coffee place, the initial place we went to was shut) at 8ish. By now the weather had collapsed and was overcast and raining with dusk fast turning the land into a washed out grey. Headed north on a miserable drive through Seattle on I5, although I did catch a glimpse of the space needle (something Ive always wanted to see but always managed to miss ever since I was about 10 and flew out of Seattle). Found a rest area just short of Arlington and kipped down for the night.