Rainier Mountain Lodge - Mineral WA

First,  thank goodness for wifi. 

I am at my yearly girls weekend outing... but I am getting ahead of myself.  Years ago I worked up at Mt Rainier.  I spent one summer working at the Longmire Inn and I spent a summer working at Sunrise... I believe this was during the late 80's.  That was a pretty good time in my life.  We were all single, didn't have a care in the world, spent our off days hiking around the park or hanging out playing guitars and singing.  anyway... I was able to keep in touch with a few of those friends from the old days and we meet up every year on opening fishing weekend.  and no we don't fish its just how we know we all need to meet up again.  Over the years different old friends have joined us and we have added one new friend, but its still the same core group. 

We spend the weekend driving around the mountain, visiting old friends and trying not to bring up the crazy things we did back in the  day, but they always seem to come up.  Its kind of like for 3 days a year we get to go back to the old days, just girls, no husbands or kids, of course I have to have my laptop, but as you can see by the time of the post I have to get online when they are sleeping or they raise all kinds of heck for me "working" while I am on vacation.   This year so far we went around to garage sales, saw some old friends, and stayed up late drinking wine and playing malarky.  Which by the way is a really fun game and you learn who in your group is a great liar and who struggles with it. 

But, my reason for posting this morning is to talk about how great this lodge is we are at.  It does belong to one of the girls in the group, so I am a bit partial but its fabulous.  It is on, I don't know how many acres, there is a trout pond, horses, ducks, a dog, chickens... and of course has a wonderful view of Mt Rainier.  It is located not too far out of Mt Rainier National Park, just outside the town of Mineral.  It is very quiet and peaceful here.  Just down the road is Mineral Lake which is usually pretty peaceful, except for this weekend where there are zillions of campers and fishermen, but we are far enough away from them that we don't even notice unless we drive into town.  I use the term town loosely as Mineral consists of a bar, a post office, and a little store with a gas station.  Oh and there are several churches.  There was a school here, but it is now the "event center".  I do believe it is for sale if you happen to know someone who is looking to buy and old elementary school. 

Well I hear rustling so I better close.  If you want to know more about the lodge here is their link.

http://www.rainiermountainlodge.com/