Day 9 - Big Sky Montana

(Sorry everyone ... it turned out Wi-Fi and 3G coverage were hard to come by in Hungry Horse ... and the park in general.  Here are the posts we queued up from the last few days).


We left the hostel after having paid an extra $10 for the lost room key ,which I accidentally flushed down the toilet. "Plink", and it was gone! I have no idea how that happened. :(

We stopped at Tim Horton's for our last of Canadian coffee for a while. Off to the US border where Chloé got a fingerprint scan and retinal scan. The US has recently changed some procedures for International travelers arriving by land. No problems at all, just some formalities. Even the customs officer said some of the forms didn't make sense. He was very helpful and pleasant. Anyways, she's more scanned than all of us now!



We all got across the border and then we were in beautiful "Big Sky" Montana, as it is known by. We drove slowly through the ski town of Whitefish where we were able to buy fresh fruit and corn from a stand. The next stop was for groceries at a Safeway. Nice to see some familiar brands although at this store you could purchase all kinds of alcohol.

Home for 3 days

We found our house in Hungry Horse with no problems. It's a quirky little thing which is very rustic and full of character. It looks as if it has had lots of additions but it works for us. We had lunch and then called to book our river rafting for Sunday. Tinsley and I will do the "scenic" trip (ie no rapids of any kind) while everyone else is going to be more adventurous. We are all really excited for this!

Panoramic view of cabin 

West Park Entrance

After making those arrangements, we drove to Glacier National Park - west side entrance. We parked the van in Apgar Village on the west end of Lake MacDonald, so we could do some walking around. The girls went in and out of gift shops and found items unique to Montana. We wandered down to Lake MacDonald and relaxed on the rocky shore while admiring the fantastic views. Just before this, we had the opportunity to look through some telescopes set up on a small field. One was pointed toward some mountains several kilometers away so we could see the striations in the rock and another was directed at the sun. This telescope filtered out everything except the hydrogen of the sun so the star appeared red. We could even see solar flares coming off of it. Really cool!  We all enjoyed relaxing by the water and even dipped our feet into the cold glacier fed water. 

Tinsley passed time taking photos

Chloe lighting her 1st camp fire

Headed back to the house for some interesting conversation about French school, philosophy and othe raid bits, followed by dinner of smokies and corn. Dessert was of course, s'mores! We all enjoy these but Chloé seemed to really enjoy roasting her marshmallow and then adding the chocolate and graham wafers. We all sang songs by the fire and laughed and just enjoyed eachothers company.

Mairin IS the S'more Queen!

The day ended under a beautifully huge, clear, star-filled Montana sky.
Jenn


P.S. we are without Wi-Fi here in the mountains, so the blog may be text only from Glen's Blackberry. Sorry no pictures for a few days.

Patiently roasting

Just one more S'more

"Dad, would you like my marshmallow?"

Never turn you back on a hungry bear.