Is It Naptime Yet

Anna and I had been going hiking at Red Rock to prepare for Glacier. Both our husbands are pretty fit, and she would have to carry Alex in the hiking carrier, and I wanted my girls to be ready for longer hikes. One week we had planned on going on a smaller hike, but ended up hiking 7 miles. We were wanting to hike to Iceberg Lake, in the Many Glacier area of the park and that’s what most of our preparation was for. The main problem being, Iceberg Lake would be at a incline the whole time and was still snow covered in some areas while we were there. The weather for Tuesday, or the planned day for our hike, was also not looking good, so we decided we’d just head out to the Many Glacier area, and do a small hike and explore the area.

We headed out on Tuesday morning, the 19th, and stopped to get gas, since we’d be driving the whole park, but a nice person pointed out that we had a flat tire, so our morning was greatly delayed and we left closer to lunch time since we had to get the tire patched.

It was already stormy looking at Many Glacier when we arrived, but mostly with cloud coverage, so we headed out on a hike that took us around one lake, I think Swift Current Lake, and then to another, I think Lake Josephine. As we were approaching the other lake, some of the hikers told us there was a grizzly on an opposite shore, so we hoped to spot it, but it had decided to go back into the forest. We hung out and skipped rocks and then some rain chased us away. We decided to take a different way back to the hotel, and it ended up being the longer trail, then it ended up raining and it even began to hail. Lilah thought it was great fun, except for her mom rushing her a long, and Eden got a nice piggy back ride because we had forgotten Jon’s poncho and the rain started to come down really hard. I’m pretty sure carrying Eden was the fastest way to return to the lodge though.

We eventually made it back to the lodge at Many Glacier and hide from the rain with all the other visitors. Anna and Kevin were waiting for us, because they had gone on ahead of us slow pokes. We decided we’d head down stairs to the cafe and bought some hot chocolate to warm up, where we also enjoyed some wonderful cinnamon rolls and a brownie in Jon’s case, for only $1 each, a steal. By this point the skies had cleared and beautiful clouds were the only thing that remained, besides it being colder and windier.

After we enjoyed our hot chocolate and snack we started back towards the cabin but we stopped first at the St. Mary’s visitor center to get their junior ranger badges. The main problem with returning home was the storm was right on the Going to the Sun Road, and that was our way back. One ranger said the road was fine, but another ranger said they had experience some fallen rock and heavy rain, and thought we should take a different route. We decided to take the route she told us too, but in some ways it was just as dangerous as the Going to the Sun Road. We drove a road that obviously was regularly washed out, and we had to drive really slow because of the curves and rain. It was beautiful and we were able to see more of Montana and pass through East Glacier, were we used the bathroom in a hostel, (I thought that was kinda cool.) but it also made us get home a lot later than Anna and Kevin.

We did get home safely and enjoyed a warm meal at the cabin that night.

After Glacier our plans were to hear towards Ely and spend a couple days with my sister Andrea and her family and visit Great Basin National Park. Sadly, while we were at Glacier, Brien’s grandfather passed away and the funeral was planned for the day we were to arrive in Ely. We debated on what we should do, and in the end we decided we’d stay an extra day in Hungry Horse with the Cotton’s, then head towards Ely as planned, but only stay one night and visit Great Basin on our way home. Our extra day in Montana was mostly used to decompress and relax. It was cloudy and rainy all day, so we did laundry, took naps and just enjoyed not doing anything or being anywhere. We organized our things and prepared to hit the road the next day.

Visit Family Vacation 2011 Pictures -Part 9 to view the pictures that go with this post.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 10th, 2011 at 10:27 pm and is filed under Family, Friends, Life trips. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.