USA West Coast Roadtrip - Day 3

The evening before, I booked a car with Alamo so we could take a trip to Mount Rainier National Park today. Uber rides are far too expensive, and public transportation outside of Seattle is hard to find or the rides take forever. After breakfast (again in a low-class café), we walk to Pike Place Market, a large weekly market where countless goods such as fish, crabs, flowers, jewelry, and various knick-knacks are sold in many small shops. The market is located in historic buildings and is a real attraction. Around 10:00 AM, we visit the car rental place. I had booked a small budget compact car, but we receive an upgrade and are thrilled to get a real SUV – a brand new (only 300 miles driven) green Jeep Wrangler. Andreas is totally excited, while I’m more worried that he might crash the car somewhere. But everything goes well; we and the car leave the rental agency's parking garage unscathed, albeit at a snail's pace, and dive into the street traffic. Luckily, Seattle isn't as crowded as New York, so we quickly find our way to Interstate 5 using Google Maps and drive two hours through the state of Washington to the snow-covered Mount Rainier. On the way there, we drive through the town of Elbe, which has a collection of train cars – we want to take a short break here on the way back. At the entrance of the national park, we have to pay 30 dollars for admission and drive the car to Logmire, where there is a small national park visitor center. Here, we are recommended a 5-kilometer trail for hiking. We buy some snacks (Snickers, cookies, KitKat) and set off. At first, the path goes steeply uphill in winding turns, and eventually, snow appears everywhere. We’re obviously not ideally equipped with our sneakers, but we continue hiking purposefully. There follows a long flat stretch where we repeatedly catch sight of the peak of Mount Rainier. Here, the path becomes increasingly wet; there are puddles everywhere, making it difficult for us to keep our feet dry as we move forward. We then reach the fork in the path that leads down to Logmire, where we can observe dark brown squirrels. By now, we are hungry and drive our Jeep back to Elbe. This town was founded by an emigrant from Hamburg – there is also a small German wooden church here. In one of the train cars, a burger restaurant is set up, where we eat pasta with tomato sauce (me) and burgers (Andreas). We really like this place. We also refuel here, which initially caused Andreas some mechanical difficulties as he forgot to squeeze the tank nozzle with force to let the gasoline flow. Around 9:00 PM, we return to Seattle and immediately fall tired into bed.