Mt. Rainier is a LONG drive from my home in Illinois. It was a 6200 mile round trip, about 2300 miles straight out. End up doing a lot of driving in the park too from one view point to another. Paradise on the south side of the volcano is always a spectacular place for flowers. Somewhat unfortunately they've paved a lot of trails to protect the "gardens" so it's hard to keep the pavement out of shots. But it helps because the trails are so, so steep!!! And it does keep people from wandering everywhere and killing the flowers. Weather is always a problem. It was nice the first day or two and then got windy and rainy. When the weather is clear, and you can see the mountain, there's nothing prettier, but it's like Denali. You may go there and never see it. You can see from the pictures that I fought the weather. The fog wasn't so much a problem (actually it's low clouds you're walking through) but the rain and dew made all the lupine droop. They're not quite as photogenic when they're drooping, as you can see in the shots. Normally, it's nice to do a trip to the Olympic NP Coast too, but I was really tired of driving by the time I got there. The camping areas are superb. I was surprised to see the river valleys littered with tree debris. Turns out they had 39 inches of rain in 12 hours about 3 years ago and it got a little ugly in the river valleys.