Park #6 - Mount Rainier

Back in June 2014 I had to do a work trip to Seattle. We decided to stay a few days later and go see some of Doni's family, and a do a trip around Mount Rainier and the Olympic Peninsula. 

Seattle is one of those places where the mountain kinda dominates the skyline: 

But we took a day and drove around and into the park from the Northwest, circled east, and then came out on the southeast side before going across the Tacoma Narrows. The mountain is up there in the fog:

I even brought a little radio with me, and tried to make a 2m Simplex contact from Paradise:

Mount Rainier was a neat place. Unless I decide to climb it someday, I don't see myself needing to go back though. Lots of big mountains I haven't seen yet, but glad I saw this one :)

Park #5 - White Sands

 I've been to White Sands twice now.. first back in 2010 I went for the Bataan Death March... where I walked 15 miles thru the dirt and sand to get a coin, and remember the sacrifice they made...... and then Also on the Atomic Amsat Road Trip. 

Here's a pic from doing the Bataan Death March (God I look young):

And of course you can read about the Atomic AMSAT Roadtrip here, on the portion we were at White Sands: http://www.kg5cci.com/2017/05/the-atomic-amsat-roadtrip-part-ii.html 

That's all I've really got on this one. Been there, done that... it's centrally located to things I like, so I might be back there again :)

Park #4 - Glacier Bay

This summer (2022) I knocked one of the big tough parks off my list... Glacier Bay. My folks have been wanting to do something with the family for a few years now, and also return to Alaska. Combine that with the fact we haven't done a good family vacation in several years cause of the Pandemic, and collectively we all decided to an Alaskan Cruise from Vancouver to Anchorage. In the planning stages we specifically made sure we would be with a company, and on a boat, that spent a day in Glacier Bay. There are other ways to get to the park, but we would see the coolest stuff on a big boat, with guides that showed us around. 

We entered the bay and the Park in the morning and met an NPS boat with rangers who boarded the ship. We then floated around and looked at bears, porpoises, whales:

 and of course, glaciers:

There was one other cruise ship in the Bay with us, but we only saw them one other time: 

There were additionally some ocean Kayakers being dropped off by a smaller ship from Juneau, who were going in for close ups of the tidewater glaciers via human power: 

I'd never seen a true tidewater glacier before, until this trip... and on this trip I saw bunches of them. It's one of those places I'd like to go back and spend more time, say like in a Kayak, but for now seeing the entire park and the remnants of the different pieces of the Grand Pacific Glacier was totally worth it.