Sunday, July 24, 2016
Posted from: West Glacier, MT - West Glacier KOA Holiday
Miles driven: 245
Total trip miles: 7,702
This post ROCKS!!!
[No seriously, this post contains a LOT of rocks. Rest assured: No glass houses were harmed in the making of this post.]
We left Idaho this morning driving towards Montana. It was a beautiful drive and Montana really is as big and beautiful as they say. (I'm not sure who "they" is, but I know they say it all of the time... to the great annoyance of their friends, no doubt.)
Some of the roads were a bit curvy, but the scenery more than made up for it. Even Matt agrees.
We checked in at our campground and decided we had plenty of time to drive into the park. We were eight minutes outside of the West Glacier entrance, and the Apgar Visitor Center was right inside the entrance. We stopped at the visitor center to pick up the kids' Junior Ranger booklets and decided to drive along McDonald Lake.
Here is where things get a bit rocky...as in, lots of colorful rocks! Glacial rock is known to be very colorful. I have seen pictures, but assumed they were enhanced in some way. They weren't. These rocks are really that colorful.
We were mesmerized.
And then we started making art to take pictures of. (You can't take anything but pictures from national parks, so we left the pretty rocks behind, but took many lovely pictures!)
Grace was determined to find rocks the same shape and size to make a rainbow.
The boys found this cool rock that we called the mountain rock, because it looked like a mountain scene.
(Our new obsession.)
The artist showing off her colorful rock covered hands.
After spending a significant amount of time at the lake (we had to be drug away), we drove back through West Glacier and stopped to explore a bit. West Glacier is outside of the park and is an interesting town. It looks to be owned entirely by the same person/company. Either way, it is a nice town.
We found a huge chair, so we all sat down.
Huckleberry is the state fruit (or something like that...they were everywhere!), so we decided to try some huckleberry ice cream. I got one bite. I'm not sure Matt got any. The rest went to these three.
We sat down and began chatting with another couple. While we were talking, these three were goofing off and having a great time. I was going to be sneaky and take a picture of them, but they all looked up at the same time and I caught this picture. One of my favorites of the trip.
We had to add a few more stickers to the map!
As if the day wasn't eventful enough, Cameron decided to lose a tooth after dinner. (bottom right tooth)
I don't have a lot of pictures of the remainder of our day, because we enjoyed it in complete darkness. We drove back to the Apgar Visitor Center at 9:30 pm. A star gazing program was to be held in the parking lot from 10-midnight. (SO COOL!!!!)
It was the perfect night for it. The moon was small and would not rise over the nearby mountain until early morning, so it was a very black sky. They had huge telescopes that allowed us to see Jupiter, Mars, and Saturn up close. The astronomer park rangers had such passion. One was a retired lawyer who had gone back to school to earn his Masters in astronomy. He was a very interesting gentleman....someone you would want to sit and have coffee with. :)
As the night went on, and the sky got darker, they began going deeper and deeper into space. We saw things farther than 30 million light years away...Think about that. The light we were looking at is millions of light years old. Seriously. It boggles the mind.
For me, the best part was seeing the Milky Way. It was so vivid and bright! The astronomer told us that only 1/4 of today's high school graduates have ever seen the Milky Way in person...goodness.
We felt so fortunate to be able to attend this program. The stars at these parks have been amazing, but this is the first program we were able to attend. The kids received Junior Astronomer patches, because they stayed the whole time, looked through the telescopes, and asked questions. At 11:30, the boys walked to the truck and fell asleep. Grace was with us the whole time.
It was a late night, but we finally returned to the campground and fell fast asleep.
No comments:
Post a Comment