The Foulger's Go To Washington: Senior Missionary P-Day

The normal mission P-Day is on Mondays, but we take ours on Saturday. The experience of other military relations couples is that Saturdays are not good visit days to the military families, because that is a family day for them and it is hard to visit on that day.

. . . . . . so we visited Mt. Rainier National Park on a P-Day

This Mountain is just massive!!! It is 14,410 feet high. Put this in perspective like this. Our house in Lacey, Washington is just a little above sea level so Mt. Rainier towers above our house here over 14,000 feet. Mt. Ben Lomond just north of our home in North Ogden is a mere 5,000 above our Utah home. Soooooo, stack just under two more Mt. Ben Lomonds on top of Ben Lomond and that would be the same as Mt. Rainier above our Washington home!!!

There are 25 active glaciers that cap the mountain.
At Paradise at 5,400 feet they get 126 inches of precipitation (not snow, but water) a year.

It is an active volcano. In fact, the top of the cone is so warm that snow does not stay on the rim at the top.

This is a zoom photo to nearly the top of the
Nisqually Glacier, one of the larger glaciers
on the mountain. Note the large chunks
of snow and ice being moved by glacier action.

This is the headwaters of the Nisqually River that
comes from the glacier. Note the "U" shaped
valley that was formed by the glacier as it moved
down the mountain over thousands of years ago. The
glacier has receded now to the upper part of the
mountain. This is at the 3,800 foot level.

This is the Nisqually River taken from the bridge where
the sign in the picture above is located. Note how close
the color of the river is to the rocks. That's because the
glacier action grinds up the grey volcanic rocks so the water
picks up the grey grindings. The Nisqually River dumps into
the Puget Sound (the ocean) about 5 miles from our house. The
is crystal clear at this point because the sand and silt all
settle out as the river flows to the ocean.