Exploring Mount Rainier National Park and Quincy, WA

Sharing is caring!

Happy Saturday my friends! It’s been another wild week of 2020 but fear not because we’re here with your daily dose of pretty pictures and some happy thoughts ;). This week we visited Quincy, WA and Silver Creek, WA. Both of these small town are host to Thousand Trails Campgrounds so we were all about it. Twelve days of free full-hook up camping? We’re there.

Trinity Gardens Lavender Farm

Our first stop in our Washington adventure was Trinity Gardens Lavender Farm. Turns out Quincy, WA is quite the mecca for farming apples, cherries, and various other fruits. They usually have u-pick farms but alas, COVID has knocked that out of the picture for the most part this year. But as Dad says, monitor and adjust! Why sit around being sad you can’t pick apples when you can go smell the roses…I mean lavender.

Trinity Gardens Lavender farm has a ton of homemade products in their gift shop from lotions to bars of soaps to serums, and of course it all smells heavenly. The staff was super nice and told us to explore the gardens as much as we like, they reviewed a map of the gardens with us and let us roam. The Lavender farm is a Harvest Host site (meaning if you’re a member of this organization you can camp out here!) and they have the most adorable Airbnb overlooking the farm. They’re also a wedding venue soooo I’m gonna need someone to come get married here so I can come to your beautiful lavender wedding, k thanks!

All of the lavender varieties they grow are labeled with purple wooden signs, this made my OCD heart very happy.

The farm was bumped right up to an apple orchard! So even though I didn’t get to pick apples, I did get a nice up close look at them!

White Trail Produce

Our farm adventure put us in the mood to try some local produce, so we headed to White Trail produce just down the road from our campground! They had an awesome variety of local fruits, veggies, and handcrafted items. We settled on local blueberries, apricots, Regina cherries, and homemade caramels (all about balance, right?). I’d highly recommend the cherries, they’re grown right in Quincy!

Crescent Bay Campground

Just some views from our Thousand Trails campground. A short walk down the road was a walking trail and swimming area, both of which Bobby enjoyed very much.

Silver Creek, WA

After wrapping up our time in Quincy we headed on across the state towards Silver Creek, WA for our next Thousand Trails stay. Though Thousand Trails has a ton of campgrounds scattered throughout Washington we settled on Silver Creek as it wasn’t too far from Seattle and hoped to make a day trip later in our stay there.

A Day at Mount Rainier National Park

Silver Creek is not far at all from Mount Rainier National Park, so you know we had to load up and check it out. National park pass to the rescue yet again! Luke and I both agreed Mount Rainier had the most unique foliage of any park we’d visited. Imagine like moss all over, lots of small green plants covering the ground, fir and cedar trees as the canopy. Actually ya know what, I’ll show you some pictures ;).

Before Mount Rainier was a national park it was Longmire springs (1899-1904). Five hundred people visited each year to enjoy the mineral springs and the view. Some of the Longmire buildings and cabins still remain at Mount Rainier. Pictured above is one of the original Longmire wells.

As we rode higher and higher up the mountain the snow began to pile up! We’d hoped to hike some trails as we made our way in the “Paradise” portion of the park, but we decided our shoes weren’t quite right for the slush and snow we’d encounter. So we opted for enjoying the view and lower trails.

That brings us to a close for this national park chapter. Check back in next week for the rest of our Washington adventure! Last week’s blog post, here.