driving to high elevations in Mt. Rainier National Park will require reservation

[ErmineNotyours]

Not a bad idea, as Paradise can really get crowded and you won't be able to find parking on most summer weekends.

So they'll have to pave Paradise and put up a parking lot?

Thank you very much. I'll be here all weekend.

See, that's exactly what they are NOT doing.  I suppose it would be possible to enlarge the parking lot but it's pretty big already.  The parking lot is really not what people come to see.

I used the shuttle bus system in Yosemite a couple of times and it seemed pretty good.  It was nice to have someone else driving so I could look at the scenery instead of the road.  However I can understand the anxiety of being left behind after the last bus.  And I'm sure it must have cost a fair amount.

When they built a new Visitors Center a few years ago, they had to temporarily use more parking spaces while they built the new building in a parking lot before turning the old building into a parking lot.  During that time they turned the loop road past the area into one-way, one-lane with the other lane being parking.  It is possible to expand parking options, but they don't want to do that permanently.

[kkt]

I thought that loop road was still one way, with parking along one side.

I think they're out of easy options to expand parking.  They could level more land, taking away the alpine meadows people come to see.  They could build underground parking, maybe - but that would be very expensive at best and I'm not sure visitors want the admission price to double either.  Might be a technical problem too - the dirt tends towards loose glacial debris.

And more parking would mean more crowded trails.

Shuttle bus, maybe, if people would take it.  It would have to run fairly often and into the evening during summer.

[triplemultiplex]

I remember the mule trains passing me. One of the things I most remember is how green the Colorado River was. I assume there was some mineral content causing that to happen.

The river should look like chocolate milk, but because of Glen Canyon Dam, all the sediment the river is supposed to carry settles out in Lake Powell.  The water that makes it thru the dam is then much, much clearer.  Only the finest particles manage to stay in suspension all the way through the reservoir and those are the ones that give the water greenish hue compared to the mostly brown rocks of the canyon.