Montana

Let me start today's blog post by telling you all that I will be taking my life in my hands if I shout out either "wow!" or "oh my god, look at that!" one more time in the car. I think the family is good and sick of hearing it. But here in Montana it is impossible not to do that. We pulled out of Indian Creek (Deer Lodge, MT) right about lunch time, and although we only had to go about 150 miles, it took us until past 11 last night to get to Kalispell. There was just so much to look at and stop and see. This place is so incredibly beautiful.

We decided to cook our own lunch yesterday which we did at a place called Beavertail Hill State Park in Missoula County. Were were one of two occupied campsites; we had the entire place to ourselves. This place is an incredible state park with two gorgeous teepees that you can camp in. A river for fishing and a self guided nature trail. Here is the link with pictures of the park: http://fwp.mt.gov/lands/site_280871.aspx

The one downside to this park is that because it is so sparsely populated with actual people, the wildlife has taken over. Not too much of a problem except I was really afraid we might run into a bear. Needless to say there were no bear sightings--that would obviously be paragraph one in these blog posts, but there did turn out to be a hornet's nest under the table where we were eating our lunch. Annoying, but no one got stung. This is noteworthy, because we couldn't figure out where the hornets were coming from and Mike kept teasing Marianne and saying, "Marianne, there's a nest under the table!" to freak her out and it turns out that is exactly where it was!

So we got on the road again and made it out to Flathead Lake, which is the largest naturally occurring body of fresh water east of the Mississippi River. It is a beautiful lake and it is really big, way too big for us to put the canoe in.

We are camping now in Kalispell at a place called Rocky Mountain-Hi campground. We will be here for two nights.

Today we are doing the highlight activity of the trip, we are going in to Glacier National Park. It should be amazing. I will report on it either tonight or tomorrow.