Sunday 9-10-23 Good-bye Mount Rainier, Hello Millersylvania State Park

 

Good-bye Mount Rainier National Park

We had a busy day of driving and doing a little shopping.

We had three fabulous days visiting Mount Rainier National Park. We were going to stay another couple of days but due to construction the main road through the park is only open on Saturday and Sunday so we thought we would move to the other side of the park while we could. 

This morning Larry noticed that we must have a mouse in the Minnie. It had fun with our toilet paper under the sink in the bathroom and the paper towels hanging in the kitchen. We follow some You Tubers, who had mice and had a hard time getting rid of them. After fifteen years of camping with the Minnie, this is the first time we have had a mouse get inside. So we changed our plans, we need to take care of the mouse.

I crawled out of bed around 7:00. I got dressed and we had breakfast. Then we got the Minnie ready to go. Once it was ready we were on the road by 8:00. We had about 50 miles to drive through the park on the road that is only open on the weekends. It was a beautiful drive. The road twisted and turned through the mountains. It also went up and down the mountain. The scenery was beautiful. There were amazing rock cliffs and canyons of trees. We saw a young doe with two fawns on the side of the road. The fawns were scared so they went back into the trees. Mom was close behind. They were the smallest deer I've seen and had a lot of fur. We drove through where the construction was being done, it looked pretty major. They were adding more drainage and widening at places. Where the drainage was getting put in there were signs, that said a bump. They weren't kidding. They repaved a lot of the road and did an excellent job. 

After leaving the park we took a two lane highway through a few small towns. When we got to          Morton we stopped at the grocery store and bought a couple of mouse traps and few other items. Then we went across the street to the Chevron station to fill the Minnie. It was the most expensive gas per gallon we have had so far, it was $5.10 per gallon. It cost us $119.68 for 23.47 gallons. But it was cheaper here than farther down the road. We knew we would pay more for gas in Washington but it's still a shock.

We drove down the road to the city park where we wanted to stay the night. Larry went to the office to get a site. The lady said not a problem. She was telling Larry what the facility had to offer. He asked about the showers. She said the pump went out and they couldn't afford to get them fixed. Larry said we'll have to pass. We decided to have lunch while Larry researched on where to go from here. He found Millersylvania State Park. It was 60 miles down the road.

On the way there we stopped by Walmart to finish up our grocery shopping. We forgot it was Sunday and the store was very busy especially in the grocery area. We were lucky we brought our recycle bags into the store otherwise we would have had to buy some. They don't have any plastic bags. When we were entering and exiting the store there were people protesting about Washington states hidden taxes in fuel prices and asking people to sign a petition. 

After putting the groceries away we went to Millersylvania State Park. Larry parked the Minnie and went inside. We wanted to pay for a site with power and buy their annual pass. There was only one young lady working and she was very good, she had to man the drive up and the office. She told Larry he didn't have to buy the annual pass because it was included in the camping fee. But he said he wanted it because we planed to visit a park or two where it was needed. It was about 3:00 and the park was filling up on the power sites.

Welcome sign

 

Millersylvania State Park office

Our site was a pull through, we had to go around and come in the other way to hook up to power. Millersylvania State Park is beautiful. The no power sites are in the trees, which would make it cooler. Some of the power sites are in the trees but most of them are out in the open. There are hiking trails in the park but we're just going to be here for the night. We plan to move down the road a few miles to another one. We setup the Minnie for the night. When it was time for dinner I heated up some leftover italian bake. 

Camping at Millersylvania State Park

After dinner I walked around the campground to get some steps in. I also did my jazz routine. I ended up doing 10,000 steps, which put me in 5th place in my group for the week. I ended up doing 92,313 steps for the week. I don't think this is too bad considering I'm on vacation. 

Larry read and I worked on my Sudoku puzzles.