Mount Rainier National Park

Mount Rainier's prominence is gravitational. Visible for hundreds of miles, it tugs you in from first sight. While the mountains of Colorado, like Rainier, rise over 14,000 feet, they have a head start with a base elevation of about 5,000 feet. Rainier starts barely 1,000 feet above sea level. I made it to the mountain five days into my Pacific Northwest road trip although less than halfway to the top.

Rainier dwarfs all other mountains in its vicinity. I saw it up close on the Skyline Trail, originating from the Paradise Visitor Center. As I passed fields of rainbow wildflowers, I could hear massive booms echoing from the mountain--sheets of ice, melting and cracking in the hot summer sun.

The scale is on an immensity that is difficult to process. Hundreds of feet high waterfalls look miniature set against the titanic lava pillar. Both Mount Adams and Mount St. Helens are visible in the distance from Rainier's intermittently snowy slopes, volcanic cousins equally alone though not as tall.

After the hike, I made my way to the park's southeastern exit, stopping to visit the narrowly carved Box Canyon of the Cowlitz and thousand year old trees in the Grove of the Patriarchs. Rainier is one of the national park system's more epic destinations, right up there with Yosemite, Yellowstone, Zion, and the rest of the top tier.

Olympic National Park

Olympic National Park is an entirely different experience depending on where within it one visits. The boundaries encompass windy, creased, subalpine peaks; verdant rainforests bursting with ferns, moss, and waterfalls; and a gray mysterious coast, shattered and broken by the crashing waves of the Pacific.

The park is a farther way from Seattle than you would think, but wasn't too crowded on a late June Monday. I started by hiking the three mile Hurricane Ridge Trail after a 20 mile drive up into the Olympic Mountains, named for their tallest point, Mount Olympus. The overlook at the end of the trail offered distant but blurred views of the ocean and Canada on the other side of the Strait of Juan de Fuca.

Next, I snacked up at a fancy organic grocery store in the town of Port Angeles, then sped off towards the park's northwestern corner. After a quick stop at Crescent Lake, I found myself at another trailhead, this time in a whirring, breathing forest within a mountain valley.

About a mile and a half along the trail a wooden bridge spans multi-spigoted Sol Duc Falls. Instead of continuing along the trail into the rainforest, I turned back and soaked temporarily in nearby Sol Duc Hot Springs.

I ended my day by the ocean. Among the numerous national park beaches along the coast, I chose to stop at Ruby Beach. It felt a bit like stepping into a fantasmic dreamscape. The crisp, clear blue skies of the mountains and rainforest had thickened into white fog, limiting visibility to a few hundred yards.

Glassy tidal pools, contorted driftwood logs, and tiny islands (or giant rocks, depending on how you look at it) dotted the strange beach. The dense fog made me feel claustrophobic. I knew a giant ocean was out there, but I could not see it.

I camped that night at South Beach, a little further down the coast. In the morning, I still couldn't see the ocean, but did get to see some more of the Pacific Northwest flora on a short hike into the Hoh Rainforest. From there I turned back east for Mount Rainier.

North Cascades National Park

High up near Washington's border with Canada, the North Cascades slash triumphantly into the sky. The national park is about three hours northeast of Seattle but the drive goes fast, broken up by giant mountains that first loom in the distance then come into focus and take on personality as the road passes. Also on the way is the washed out hillside that swept away the town of Oso in March 2014.

Along with my sister and her boyfriend, we made a quick stop at the visitor's center and a couple overlooks before driving to the east side of the park and hiking a few miles out to an unmarked but well-trodden trail to what we referred to as Extra Beautiful Turquoise Lake. The radioactive blue waters collecting at the base of waterfall-laced mountainsides actually go by the name Lewis Lake, but we liked our name better.

After the hike we drove to the Washington Pass overlook beneath Liberty Bell Mountain's twin peaks and took in one last sweeping view of the rugged, rutted mountains before stopping for ice cream  in Marblemount and driving back to the city. I was growing ever more impressed with the Pacific Northwest.