This year we headed up to Montana to Glacier National Park the week after July 4th. We left on Monday July 5th, our 8 year anniversary, and made the 9 1/2 hour drive up to St. Mary Montana. We stayed at a campground there called Johnson's of St. Mary's. It was a nice campground that even had showers, which we rarely have when camping.
The first night we got there and set up camp. The we fried up some vegetables and sausage for dinner. The boys had a great time exploring the camp. Then we took a walk as a family after dinner.
The next day we headed into the park. We first drove through it to go to The Trail of the Cedars. We drove around the parking area for the trail and never found a place to park so we headed farther west to a picnic area on the each of Lake McDonald. There we played in the lake for a while then had lunch.
After lunch, we drove by the trail of the cedars again but didn't find a spot so we headed back east to Logan Pass Visitors Center. We drove around the parking lot for a while trying to snag a parking spot again. However we finally decided to go to a smaller parking lot about 1/2 a mile away and just walk back. We got to see some awesome views and a cool waterfall on our walk though so that was nice. We also saw some mountain goats.
We then went to the visitor's center. We also did part of a trail behind the visitor's center called Hidden Lake. I don't have any pictures of this because my phone died but it was a mile and a half hike that we probably did about half of, maybe a little more until Spencer said he was too tired. During this hike, we actually got to walk on top of a glacier. Connor thought this was the best and was constantly falling down in the snow and laughing. He also kept eating the snow. Liz finally got fed up trying to stop him and just let him go for it. After that we went back to camp and had dinner and smores. We also saw some bug horned sheep along the road on the way out of the park.
The next day the boys chose to go swimming first. We went to Lake St. Mary to swim this time. The bad part was it was cloudy and a little rainy that day so swimming didn't last long because the boys said this lake was colder than the last one. I am not sure if it was actually colder or just a colder day so it felt colder to them.
Next we drove to the Goat Lick Overlook. We did see trains going across a cool bridge but we did not however see any goats while we were there.
After that we went to Two Medicines area of the park. There we had a late lunch and then took a hike to the Appistoki Falls. We actually ended up going a little past the falls on the trail to get to an overlook of the mountains. Then we took some time to play in the water a the falls.
Then we went back to camp and had dinner at the restaurant at the campground.
The next day we packed up camp and drove to Lava Hot Springs Idaho. This was an 8 1/2 hour drive, so that pretty much took up our whole day. The campground did have a playground for the boys to play on when we arrived and Jeff and Liz set up camp and made dinner.
The next day we went to the pool at Lava Hot Springs. We spent the morning and lunch there swimming in the pool, eating lunch, and playing in the splash pad area.
That afternoon Uncle Nick and Aunt Karri joined us and we rented a 4 man tube to float down the river over the rapids. We took the 3 older boys on the raft the first time we went down with Jeff holding Evan while he was sleeping. I didn't get pictures of the rafting but Wyatt didn't like it at all. Spencer said it was fun but he only wanted to go 1 time. Connor didn't say anything but I assume he loved it because he went twice. So the rest of the two hour rental Nick, Karri, and Liz or Jeff (they switched off watching kids on the shore) rode down the river. We then went back to camp and had dinner with Nick and Karri.
The next day we packed up camp and headed back home. It was a very full week but we had a lot of fun!
