Well, this year we decided to let David decide where the family would go for vacation. It is his last year with the family before graduation in 2012 and since we didn't know if he would be around next August to join us, we thought it would be a fun little tradition to start. That means that in 3 years, Zach can choose, and in four years it will be up to Alex. My how time flies!
David chose to go inland this summer and visit one of the most beautiful places in America: Glacier National Park in Montana. Now, I still have several other places to visit in North America, but after visiting Glacier I have to say it is definitely among the top spots. The mountains within the park rise from the earth to reach the heavens and all around you is such natural beauty it's difficult to describe. Hopefully you'll grasp a little bit in the photos I share, but really - one has to visit to grasp the scope of its majesty. God is truly awesome!
Before we went to Glacier, we took the boys for a day at Silverwood Amusement Park in Couer d'Alene, Idaho. It's the closest amusement park we have to Boise, but still took us close to seven hours to drive it. Likely we could've made Seattle in about 8 or nine hours and hit up Six Flags, but this was on our way! It included about 5 roller coaters as well as the other usual rides, plus a water park. It was a wonderful day for it; the weather was perfect!
After spending the night there at an adjacent park, we traveled across the state and into Montana to get to Glacier. It was another all day trip but the views were lovely and we stopped several times along the way.
A couple of the highlights of Glacier include the day hike John and David did across the "Wall". The wall is a range of mountains in the center of the park that separate the east from the west in a sliver of sharpened rock that reaches far overhead and slices into the clouds. It's truly gorgeous and looks so much like a mountain wall it's crazy. They hiked along the "Highline Trail" about 3/4 of the way to the top from Logan's Pass, across a glacier where they ate lunch and then the trail took them downward into a meadow that included a chateau which was a nice rest stop near the end of the loop. After resting, they plunged about four thousand feet over just a few miles to the road where they grabbed a shuttle back to camp.
The family went on many hikes together. One of our favorites was the trail to Avalanche Lake. There were several waterfalls tumbling down the mountains on the far side and we all trekked along the lake to get closer. Once there, John and the boys had a bet going as to if they could find the foot of any of the waterfalls, but every one they tried seemed to lead them too deeply into -obvious- bear country! They finally gave up but the landscape was awe-inspiring with or without the find of the falls. And we were perfectly content not being eaten by a grizzly.
We did get to see a grizzly when on the other side of the park. We also saw a black bear just a few feet from our truck but we were too slow to snag a photo. We caught some longhorn sheep on the road from Logan's Pass on film, however, and you'll also see pics of us on a boat trip on Lake McDonald. All in all, it was a wonderfully memorable vacation!
Hope you enjoy the slide-shows - hopefully they all work...
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