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A day trip to Mt. Rainier National park in my BMW X3 m40i

1st April 2025, 11:38 by Ananth Iyer

The feeling of driving the BMW is unexplainable. It feels like a “race car” when I switch from the Mercedes.

BHPian mobike008 recently shared this with other enthusiasts:

March 22nd, 2025

I hadn’t driven the Bimmer for a couple of weeks as the full attention is now on the new kid on the block.

https://www.team-bhp.com/forum/elect...ml#post5944111

Last Saturday, I had planned to meet up an old pal from Hyderabad (who lives in Dallas) visiting Seattle for a long weekend. I promised to take him to our flagship mountain- Mt. Rainier National Park for a day trip. He was staying in a fancy hotel in Downtown Seattle so I picked them up around 9am and we headed further south towards Rainier.

From Seattle, Rainier is about 100 miles south east so it was a good 2-hour drive which we enjoyed chit chatting and catching up as we were meeting after almost a decade. Last I met him was at my home in Hyderabad in 2017.

We stopped for coffee enroute and also stopped at a few places for pictures and when we reached Mt. Rainier, it was one of the best that I personally enjoyed. I normally visit this beautiful national park at least 4-times in a year and sometimes, it’s even 5 times as I want to enjoy this gorgeous place in different seasons.

We stopped at the main parking in Paradise (What an Apt name for the location) and walked around enjoying the scenery and due to heavy snow (15 feet and above) many sight seeing places were closed. The ranger even warned us to carry chains but, I have driven in the worse conditions in my BMW (Will share a travelogue separately of one of the most scariest snow drive in my life that happened in February 2025) so this was nothing.

It looks like half of Indians from Texas were in Seattle for their Spring break as whoever we talk to were from Dallas. Looks like they wanted to enjoy the snow here before their temprateres cross 100 degrees.

We spent a good 4 hours exploring the area and hiked a bit up in the snow. My feet was dug in until my knees…lol!. But, I always enjoy hiking in the snow, it’s stressful but, super fun.

While going to Mt. Rainer, we spotted a “Ukrainian” restaurant just before entering the park. We had made up our mind that we will stop there for a late lunch when we are returning so around 4pm, we stopped for an amazing lunch of Beetroot soup, Sourdough bread, Chicken and Veg Momo style apps and some Eastern European (Moldova, Poland, Ukraine) non-alcoholic beverages.

After that heavenly lunch in such an amazing location, we drove back to Seattle and I took them straight to a lovely place in Downtown called Queen Anne and it is one of the most boisterous place in entire Seattle during a Seahawks game. We enjoyed some great time in a full packed, noisy, cheering and shouting environment our dinner before I dropped them back to their hotel around 9pm and headed back home.

Another beautiful day-trip goes into the memory lanes….Cheers

P.S : The feeling of driving the BMW is unexplainable. It feels like a “race car” when I switch from the Mercedes. Gosh, I don’t think the feeling of happiness of driving this car can be explained in simple words

Meeting after nearly a decade.