After a week in Billings we loaded up the car and drove North to Browning to reunite with Tyler!
The girls are great travelers, but have started to get a bit whiny when I stop the car specifically for Gnomee pictures. Heidi got out of the car with me this time and took my picture.
The girls were overjoyed to see Daddy again and we went out to dinner in East Glacier and got some Huckleberry pie. Browning isn't much of a town, it's on the Indian Reservation and there are Rez dogs (stray dogs) EVERYWHERE and it kind of has a "wrongside of the tracks" feel to it. These factors along with the fact there were no openings at the hotels, made us drive 30 miles back to spend the night in Cutbank.
Tyler had 2 more days of work left and there wasn't a lot of options for the girls, so we spent the morning at the Cutbank school playground and then decided to drive to the park.
It was a beautiful day and I'm glad we decided to drive to Glacier and spend it there, because evey day since then it has rained!
We drove through East Glacier to Two Medicine lake and it was wonderful. We found a stream where the water barely reached the girls knees and the water wasn't terribly cold. The rocks were beautiful and the water was crystal clear so the girls spent hours walking around collecting rocks and getting soaked.
Quinn was in heaven, being able to get as wet and dirty as she wanted and throw all the rocks she could.
There were plenty of tourists in the park but we were able to find our own little spot where we could pretend we were alone.
That night we picked up tyler from work and headed out on our first family adventure in a month!
Instead of a hotel we opted to sleep in a tipi!
There were half a dozen Blackfoot lodges set up a few miles out of Browning and it was an awsome experience.
The only hiccup was all the prarie dogs! As we were ferrying our supplies down to the tipi, we took our grocery bags of dinner supplies and went back to the car for another load, when we returned Tyler found a prarie dog chewing through the bag of cookies! The girls were then put on gaurd duty and couldn't have been happier.
Having a fire inside was my favorite part and actually warmed the whole place up really quickly! It rained that evening, night and the next morning so it was nice to have a warm place to sleep outside!
After the kids were asleep, Tyler and stayed up and talked and it was just great, one of my favorite nights ever!
The next day was Tyler's last day of work and it was raining, so we spent the morning cleaning up his apartment (the kids watched movies while I cleaned) and by the afternoon the rain had stopped so we went back to the lake.
On the way we stopped to take a short hike to a waterfall.
The kids loved it and loved all the shallow beautiful water and pretty rocks. It was so beautiful, I can't even describe it.
Here is where Tyler lived during his 4 weeks in Browning. I shot a quick picture while we drove by for the last time.
We headed through St. Mary's and into the park just in time for the rain to break and the sun to shine! We didn't realise this would be the last sunshine of the trip and didn't really appreciate everything because we assumed we would come back the next day.
The whole trip had been full of bear warnings so we wern't really suprised to see a bear cub by the road. I was suprised that Tyler drove by so quickly though- and he got a good lecture on how to rubberneck.
We stopped to walk to some falls and enjoy the scenery. The kids really just wanted to get wet, so anything we did that didn't accomplish this was a complete failure to them. Turned out the waterfall wasn't the 'go up and touch' kind, but we did find a nice tiny, muddy stream that went through the path so we stayed and played and got nice and dirty and soaking wet.
Quinn isn't the greatest hiker yet. We end up carrying her as far as we can while she yells and kicks to be set free, then we set her down and she runs the opposite direction of where we want to go. This becomes a lot more difficult when she is muddy and wet and hungry.
Another dissapointment for the kids was that we didn't actually get to step on a glacier, but after our 2 mile hike turned into such a "fun" experience, we decided none of us would survive anything longer.
We got up to the top and caught some glimpses of the beautiful peaks through the clouds. Well, I did, the girls just wanted to feed and pet the rodents.
It was requested that I take this picture, although the instructions were to just get the bunny and unicorn with the peak. We had gotten the girls some moccosins in Browning which ended up being a life saver and the only things they would wear.
Tyler took these pictures. As a general rule I kept my eyes glued on the sky or just shut completely as we drove down the Going to the Sun road.
Tyler found Quinn a little blackbear that growls at the gift shop. She growls at it and bites it's nose and tries to squeeze it to death. Here the kids are trying to lure a ground squirrel out of it's hole with a stuffed bunny and Alex's shoe.
Quinn really has no problem wandering off and away and never looking back. Alex would always keep close to me, and Heidi would never wander far without checking back. Quinn needs a leash.
Our second Glacier day was a complete bust. As we drove back up the Going to the Sun road we were met with this.
It was utterly terrifying. You couldn't see 15 feet in front of you, and going off the road ment certain death.
So Tyler took them to the car while I hiked 2 miles up hill in a cloud to get to this fantastic overlook.......
It was a fun hike and there were plenty of people on the way up, but on the way back I got lucky and saw this...
I got to enjoy mom and baby mountain goat all by myself, about 15 feet away for awhile before a crowd formed and I wandered off.
It made the cloud hike worth it.
On the way back I got a bit nervous. After all those bear warnings I was sure I was going to walk through a cloud and come face to face with one. So I started doing the 'walk 10 feet and clap my hands ' trick, which was only slightly embarassing when 2 seconds later I would pass a group of people.
Our drive back was super exciting.
We had just left the cloud cover when we saw this car veer and go onto the gaurd rail rocks. It was terrifying watching them drive on the edge and I remember reaching my hands out as if I could stop them or alert them to the fact that was a bad idea. We stopped right next to them and Tyler jumped out and helped them escape the car. We stayed for a minute but there was nothing we could do and no one was injured, plus traffic was backing up behind us so we drove on to inform a ranger.
We decided to drive to town and catch a movie since it was to cold and wet in the park. But all the movies are for 13 year olds we we just sort of drove around and then went back to camp and discovered that the tarp under our tent had collected all the water that was pouring down all day, and so our sleeping bags, pads, crib, and blankets were all soaked through. So we built up a fire and spent the next 3 hours trying to dry our stuff out. We put the tarp above the tent as well, but of course there was no more rain once we did that.
