Day Trip to Mount Rainier

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When I was a kid, probably about Ruthie’s age, my parents took me on a road trip from Minneapolis to the Badlands and Mount Rushmore. The most vivid memories I have of that trip are 1) seeing the region’s destruction from recent flooding, and 2) my bad attitude.

In fact, I remember hiking up to the view point to Mount Rushmore, looking at the four faces carved into the side of a rocky mountain, and declaring, “We drove all the way here for THIS?”

Yeah, I was a charmer.

So I suppose it was parenting Karma when Ruthie, who was totally fine during the drive up to the Paradise Visitor Center on Mount Rainier last weekend, suddenly “felt sick” as we got ready to hike one of the trails.

I won’t go into all the details of her bad attitude because public shaming is not my goal here, but it was one of those moments where it was challenging for me to stop trying to control everything and just enjoy myself regardless of how other people decided to act.

And even though she didn’t “recover” enough to pose for a family photo, these moments are easier to deal with now that she’s older, because we can just leave her on the park bench “to die” while the rest of us take in the beauty of mountains and meadows.

It was a beautiful drive, a beautiful hike, and except for a brief mental breakdown when my blood sugar dropped and I was convinced Bryan was a bigger douche bag than Heisenberg, it was a glorious day.

Flickr slide show below:

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