Glacier National Park

We found this great cabin resort in Whitefish called the North Forty. It was so peaceful! I love that the boys had somewhere to run and explore after being in the van for the five and a half hour trip. We promptly found a path next to the cabin and walked for a good hour to get the kinks out. Dinner at Sizzler and the Transformers movie followed later on, but Cameron was in no mood to sit still, so he and I ended up leaving the movie five minutes in so that the REST of the theater goers could actually enjoy their experience. The boys LOVED it. They were so cute when they came out, throwing punches and saying how cool Optimus and Bumblebee were.
Tuesday we drove through Glacier. Look at how green everything is. I stopped counting the waterfalls after I hit twenty just on the 50 mile road through the park. There is constant runoff and the ground is pretty saturated. Even Cameron got excited whenever he saw a waterfall and shouted out, "OH! I see ANOTHER waterfall!" Alex and Jacob were great to find them as well. When we told people we were coming here, the different comments we heard were,

• "There is so much wildlife there!"
• "You'll probably see a bear...they're everywhere!"
• "I'm pretty sure you'll see a wolf or maybe even a moose."
• "Make sure you watch for mountain goats. They're all over the hills."

Wait until you see our wildlife count at the end.


We had lunch in Apgar Village (KFC at a picnic table is perfect) and skipped rocks on the shores of Lake MacDonald before the drive through the park. This was our first hiking stop. It basically was our ONLY stop for hiking. See Cameron? That's the position he constantly wanted to be in whenever we tried to hike, so we gave up on that idea. This trail was about a mile, and was really pretty. One of the signs explained how the roots are very shallow due to the fact that there is so much water in the ground. We saw a ton of trees that had just fallen over from the wind because they really had nothing to anchor themselves to the ground. Beautiful hike.

Isn't this fun?

We stopped at another lake to skip more rocks and came within five feet of this deer. Alex and Jacob WANTED to walk all the way up and touch it, but decided to obey instead. The deer was just hanging out by the restrooms, laying in the grass. It later got up and walked away.

Another stop to skip rocks. The water was pretty fast, and so pretty.

It took us about seven hours to drive the 50 miles through the park. When we got to the other end, it was 8:00pm! We made it back to the other side in an hour.

Final count of wildlife going through the park:

• three deer
• two squirrels
• one chipmunk

We came home on Wednesday. After getting lost getting out of Whitefish (not really lost, but making the wrong turn TWICE...my fault) we hit the road at noon. We made it to Idaho Falls for dinner (mmm...Olive Garden) and the boys actually voted against spending the night and we pushed through the rest of the trip. We made it safely to our house at 12:30 in the morning. I was so glad we didn't have to get up and drive the next day. We were happy to be home and see our dog Chey.

1. beautiful scenery

2. skipping a rock seven bounces (my personal best)

3. listening to great music on the way home

4. seeing the Idaho Falls temple

5. loving my family