Laurel Falls Hike in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park

While in Tennessee last year, we went on the Laurel Falls hike in Smoky Mountains National Park. It's a very popular trail and we had a hard time finding parking. We drove up and down the road a ways and almost left before eventually finding someone just pulling out from a a small lot down the road. 

Roundtrip the hike is 2.6 miles and is described on the NPS website as moderate in difficulty, but we found it to be more on the easy side of moderate. We saw several preschool-elementary school aged kids on the hike and they seemed fine. Although there are some steep drop-offs, so you definitely wouldn't want to take kids who weren't familiar with hiking or who are rowdy on this hike!

Anyways, it was a nice hike. The weather was nice and while there was a fair amount of people on the hike, it wasn't too busy.

After the hike we drove up to an overlook at the Tennessee and North Carolina border and saw part of the Appalachian trail.

Have you ever been to Great Smoky Mountains National Park?

Hiking in the Hoh Rainforest in Olympic National Park

Back in April my family traveled to Washington state to visit my grandparents. February of 2020 was the last time we had been to see them so we were anxious to go back and visit! 

While we were there we wanted to do some hiking so we decided to head up to Olympic National Park. It was about a two hour drive up to Forks where we planned on eating lunch before heading out to the Hoh for our hike.

Once we arrived in Forks we made a stop at the grocery store for a couple of things, we ate lunch, stopped by the Forks sign so my sister could get a picture for her friends, and then we drove out to the Hoh rainforest. We were quite surprised upon arriving near the park at the long line to get in! There were so many people they had to do the one-car-out-one-car-in policy. We sat there for probably half an hour before getting into the park. While having to wait was a bit annoying it was nice that the park wasn't too crowded and we didn't have a problem finding a place to park. 

There are quite a few trails you can hike, the shortest of which just went kind of around the visitor center and was like a mile long. We wanted to do something longer so my sister had decided beforehand that we could do the Hoh river trail, which is just over 17 miles long. Obviously we wouldn't be hiking all of it but we thoguht we would just go as far as we felt like and we figured it would be less crowded and it certainly was. We only came across maybe 10 people. The majority of people seemed to be doing the very short trails.

I don't remember how many miles we ended up hiking. Maybe 3 or 4? We got a little bit later start to the day, lunch was a little longer than we had anticipated and then the wait to get into the park pushed us back a little time-wise, but it was still really nice to get out and go for a hike!

We were really lucky to get such nice weather. It's not often you get such beautiful weather on the Washington coast! And it was nice to get a little peek of Mount Olympus!

After our hike we stopped at a neat gift shop/outdoor store outside of the park where we were able to get a bunch of fun souvenirs, some cold drinks, national park t-shirts, and other random things.

Do you enjoy hiking? 

Visiting Mt. Rainier

Despite having lived in Washington most of my life, Mt. Rainier was one place my siblings and I had never been. We finally had some nice weather and decided to make the trek up there!

It took us a couple of hours to get up there from my grandparents' house, and once we got into the park we searched for a place to stop and eat our lunch.

We found an area with some picnic tables and we ate our lunch. The weather was really nice! Warm, and clear blue skies, except for a few clouds surrounding the mountain. After lunch we walked over to the first viewing area where we caught our first view of the mountain from inside the park! 

It took us quite a while to actually get up the mountain as there was quite a bit of construction on the way up, plus there was a fair amount of cars. 

We were disappointed that the clouds hadn't gone away. But unfortunately that is pretty typical with Mount Rainier! 

It was hot when we reached Paradise, which is where the lodge and visitor center is. We were not expecting it to be as warm as it was. I believe it was in the 80's.

We started our hike up the Skyline trail, which was incredibly steep! The lodge is at 5,400 feet in elevation, and then we hiked about a mile and a half, and ended up at 6,700 feet in elevation! Talk about steep!

We really enjoyed our time at Mount Rainier and I'm glad we finally got to go visit! It was just so beautiful! While I wish the clouds had gone away, they just seemed to keep circling around the mountain so we could never get a completely clear view. I would definitely recommend visiting if you're ever in Washington!