Mt. Rainer - Carbon River Entrance

On Thursday Robb and I set out to Mt. Rainer to hike Skyline Trail. Our Hiking Mt. Rainer book said Skyline Trail would have a beautiful view of Mt. Rainer, glaciers, a waterfall, hiking above the treeline, and a good chance of seeing deer. I decided to drive and pointed out our directions to Robb so he could navigate. Well after driving for a couple of hours I really felt that we should have arrived. I asked Robb what was going on and it came out that we were looking at two different set of directions. We were a good couple of hours away from where we should've been and it was already early afternoon, so we decided to head to the Carbon River Park Entrance, which we were fairly close to and the entrance we went to last time we hiked with my Dad.
The Carbon River Entrance is closed to cars right now because of massive flash flooding in November 2006. We decided to park outside the entrance and walk through the area to see the flood damage. When we first started walking along the road we saw a few potholes in the paved road, but nothing special. I told Robb if they closed the road because of a few large potholes, that would be pretty pathetic. We took some pictures of the trees. It's a little scary to hear the creaking of the trees as they sway in the wind in the quiet of the forest. The creaking is sometimes so loud it sounds like someone is taking a small chainsaw to the forest. Below Robb is pictured sitting between a couple to give you an idea of their size. They go quite a bit higher than where the picture stops too. Then we finally came across the real flood damage. The road was completely gone. A little walking pathway was created by the park rangers alongside where the road used to be. It was hard to decide if the former road was actually a road, there were tons of river rocks, broken trees, giant gashes, etc. No road was left. Below you see the rocks on the left. That used to be where some of the road was. To the right of me is an uprooted tree. That's right, that's a tree trunk/root system. I'm 5'5'' for those that don't know. Obviously the flood damage was pretty impressive. I've never really seen what flash flooding can do before. Even though we didn't make it to Skyline Trail (we will be trying again for that this upcoming week) this hike was very worth the trip.