Spray Park — Sunday, Jul. 14, 2019

We started out later than usual, arriving on the washboard road (not the greatest road) to reach the trailhead. Many, many cars lined along the road by 12 PM, but we were able to find a spot between some cars and have a short walk to the trailhead, just past the restrooms. Two rangers were checking cars for passes. Since we had arrived later than most, the trail was not crowded. Beautiful day for hiking; trail was wet and muddy in some spots, but overall in great shape. We stopped at a Eagle Cliff viewpoint and also Spray falls (.1 mile from the main trail) and proceeded up the switchbacks to find the meadows. Mt Rainier was on and off obscured by clouds, but fairly visible by the time we reached the meadows. The mosquitoes were awful for a bit once we reached the first meadow. Others had sighted a bear, but we never saw them. Many wildflowers and beautiful bear grass as we went higher on the trail. There were a couple of rangers hiking the trail to keep an eye out for hikers straying off the trail. A good idea there is some monitoring since later we came across a couple of hikers who trampled a field of wildflowers to get to the other side. Very sad to see this indiscriminate abuse. Later driving to return home, we saw tourists collecting foxglove alongside the road!