We're back already...

Okay, yes, we were going to be gone till tomorrow afternoon and then I was going to give you a tour of the tiny trailer--our Little Guy.

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But despite the fact that inside the tiny trailer we were warm (I could have used another blanket) and cozy, outside the tiny trailer it looked like this:

Some of those puddles were three or four inches deep. Camping at Ohanapecosh in June can be iffy. We've been and had such a good spell that we stayed an extra day, and we've been and packed up and come home twice in the same weekend before. So it's no surprise to find rain.

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So instead of going hiking from there, I said: "MY TOES ARE FROZE! We have to go somewhere in the car and put the heater on." So we did.

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We set out to go up to Paradise and on the way encountered this:

(No, Paulie, this is not a leftover shot from our January trip--THIS WAS TODAY!)

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Well, it didn't discourage this group,who were setting out for some mountaineering training, I think. Bet their toes weren't froze before they started.

Well, we went on all the way to the west side of the park, and since we were there we were to scout out a good campsite for camping with the kids at Cougar Rock. That campground is not due to open for a bit because the most of campsites look something like this:

Now, one thing I was able to do was to fill in a couple of bits of my ABC Wednesday posts. This first a new bit for D where I talked about Devil's Club. Now, it took me a bit to figure it out, and I had to stop the car and get a close look, but these are Devil's Club shoots before they leaf out. Cool, no? (No I'm not talking about my toes any more--they had thawed out by this time.)

When I did N I posted about the National Park Inn which is part of the historic district at Longmire. The only photos I had for it were winter shots where the Inn was deep in snow. So here it is today. You see, there is not snow EVERYWHERE--just a lot of wheres.

For O I was telling about the Old Growth Forest at Ohanapecosh (where we camped among the puddles last night) and I mentioned nurse logs but didn't have any pictures. Today a short hike on Twin Firs Trail got us very close to lots of nurse logs--fallen trees which provide a perfect growing place for new plants. They aren't always easy to take a picture of, and I thought closer would be better, but it was still hard to get a good illustration.

And after going back up part way toward Paradise to return to our camp, we encountered snow on the road at much lower elevations and figured it could be would be much worse on the higher parts we had traversed in the morning, so we continued west to Ashford and had lunch at the Copper Creek Inn. (That is hot tea there. I ORDERED HOT TEA. You can tell that even though my toes were thawed out I still felt cold because I only drink hot tea with Chinese food.)
...and took the longer route back to Ohanapecosh by way of major highways outside the park.

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And we packed up and came home.

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So, we had a whole different set of adventures that we hadn't expected, but I didn't get a set of pictures for the trailer tour and you will have to wait on that one. I did get some other special ones which I will post in separate posts.
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Watch this spot •
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Edit added later: the promos for tonight's late news say they will interview campers about how they are coping with the cold. Ha! YOU KNOW HOW WE DID IT! We split!!!