Mount Rainier National Park, WA
Jan and I took off to Mount Rainier 1.5 hrs away on Sunday afternoon. It was a beautiful, hot day and we thought a trip closer to the snow might be nice. We had the trail pretty much to ourselves and some elk the whole time. Palisades Lake Trail meanders through several meadows (soon to be covered with alpine flowers) and small lakes, the last of which is Upper Palisades Lake. A Palisade is a wall made of stakes or trees like you'd see as a defense around something in Medieval Europe. They named it Palisades Lakes because they make a "ring" around the mountain.