Over the years, I have often traveled to Paradise, grateful for the access to the mountain that a room here provides. I could count on the same experience every time: plain rooms without televisions or telephones, a magnificent lobby, sharp-smelling cedar boxes in the gift shop, and, depending on the weather, Mount Rainier framed in any window facing north. To my mind, nothing needed changing.
So it was with some trepidation that I made my plans this summer to visit the inn, which had reopened in May after a two-year, $22.5 million renovation. Would the lobby be updated, the rooms accessorized? Would Paradise seem strange?
The inn opened in 1917 in the shadow of World War I. Built at 5,400-foot elevation from Alaska yellow cedar logged nearby and rocks unearthed by the powerful Nisqually Glacier, it cost $91,000.
Ninety-one years later, the lodge stands, symbolizing the values of that era: a reverence for nature, shelter built from surrounding resources, and a destination that encourages people to experience wilderness. Paradise, one of the great lodges of the Pacific Northwest, is a National Historic Landmark.
Driving to the inn is a pleasure, in part because the roads were engineered to provide spectacular vistas. I took my time, driving 19 miles in four hours, starting at the Nisqually Park entrance in the southwest corner of Mount Rainier National Park. Even though it was overcast, there were many reasons to stop - waterfalls, an old-growth forest, a log footbridge across a creek. At Cougar Rock, the cold, milky gray water of the Nisqually River rushed down a corridor littered with massive boulders and broken trees, a stark reminder of the perilous beauty of this 14,400-foot active volcano.
