Mt Hood, Mt St Helens, Mt Rainier
 

Are all of these a must see?
We will be driving from Crater Lake to Seattle & would like advice.
Thank you

When and where are you coming from (Before Crater Lake)?
What are your time limitations?
Leave Crater Lake NP by the north entrance. Turn right on Rt. 138 to US 97 North. Spend a night in Bend. Continue north on 97 to Madras and then west on US 26. Near Government Camp turn onto Rt. 35. Visit Timberline Lodge on Mt. Hood. Continue north on Rt. 35 and spend a night in Hood River. See the waterfalls west of Hood River including Multnomah. If you still have time, head out to see Mt. St. Helens. It is quite a ways east from I-5 and a long backtrack. IMO Mt. Rainier is a lot easier coming from Seattle.

Mt. St. Helens is exceptional because of the volcanic explosion. But it is more out of the way than one would guess from the maps (the east observation point is probably the best).

http://www.flickr.com/photos/mksfca/...th/4234244375/

I think they are all special, especially if you can drive up to their visitor's center/lodges.

And they are all pretty easy to get to, and you could do all three in one day if you had to - two days for sure if you spent the night at say Timberline Lodge up on Mt. Hood, and then went on to Mt. St. Helens and on to Ranier.

BTW - if you drive from Crater Lake north to Mt. Hood - you will see some other cascade gems - such as the Three Sisters and Mt. Jefferson - along hiway 97.

FYI - from Crater Lake to Mt. Hood is about 220 miles - doable in 4 plus hours.

From Mt. Hoods - you could drive up to the Mighty Columbia - at Hood River and then west along the river - stopping at some of the 7 beautiful waterfalls on the Oregon side - the highest being Multnomah Falls -where they have a great restaurant/coffee shop - and you can look up at the falls through the windows in the ceiling. :)

From there - it's a couple hours over to Portland up I-405/I-5 to the Mt. St. Helen's turnoff.

They are all excellent and very different. Having been to Crater Lake, Mt. Hood, Mt. Rainier, Mt. St. Helens, Olympic, North Casades, Columbia Gorge, San Juan Islands and the entire coast in WA and OR--Mount Rainier is easily #1 attraction for me. So much so, that we are going back just to spend a weekend there this summer. We were there when flowers were just great this past year, hope to hit it just right again.

Of the three, we never tire of visiting Mt. Rainier.

We prefer viewing Mt. Hood driving south on OR-35 out of Hood River and driving west on WA-14 from Maryhill to Washougal.

We prefer visiting Mt. Saint Helens from the hard-to-get-to east entrance, but the last time we tried that there was no warning on the way that the entrance was closed. It was a very time consuming wild goose chase.

HTtY

Mt. Ranier is great - but Timberline Lodge at Mt. Hood is our favorite place to stay.