When I flew to Portland a few years back, I was stunned to see a huge mountain outside the plane window. It was as high as our plane! I later discovered this was Mt. Rainier, which sits 54 miles outside Seattle and has a peak of over 14,000 feet. Supposedly, it can even be seen from Portland on occasion.
I only saw Rainier once on this trip, and that was a total accident – I was pulling out of a Walmart parking lot in Lacey, Washington and just happened to see this snow-capped mountain off in the distance, pictured above.
I expected that I’d get lots of great pictures of Rainier while I traveled the Pacific Northwest, but I never saw it again. While in Seattle, it was too cloudy and foggy to see the mountain. Either that, or I was in parts of town that had tall buildings which blocked its view.
Most of my Seattle pics looked like this… nice skyline, but no Rainier!
9000 Miles 
I lived in Seattle a month before I ever saw Rainier because of the could cover. And when I finally did see it, I was so awed I literally couldn’t breathe for a second. I’d heard about its grandeur but wasn’t expecting it to look so imposing, almost ominous.
cloud cover