Esther's Excellent Adventure
When Esther finds herself with five days free of family and work obligations, what else is she going to do but solo hike the Wonderland Trail, around Mount Rainier? Many thanks to herself for the awesome report and the gorgeous summer-mountain photos (except where noted)! Saturday, August 5, found me getting on a flight home to Seattle, leaving Steve and the kids to spend another 6 days working on his family’s old Vermont house that one of his ancestors built around 1840. When we had made the travel arrangements back in the spring, Steve had suggested that I might prefer to fly back early, and I had jumped at the opportunity, immediately starting to brainstorm. There were a lot of things I would love to do in the Pacific Northwest in August, but not all of them seemed ideal as solo adventures. I kept coming back to the idea of trying to hike the Wonderland Trail around Mount Rainier. It was close, I wouldn’t need a car shuttle if I hiked the entire loop, and while I could challenge my