The BrehiThomas Family Blog: July Special Edition--Montana Trip

We were crazy enough to do a double vacation--leaving straight from the ranch to camp in Montana and explore Glacier National Park. (Side note, we will NOT be doing that again because we had a lot of things in the van that were not needed for the ranch and visa versa for camping. Too much stuff and we were exhausted by the end of the 8 days of not being home).

Despite my (not so genius) plan of leaving from the ranch, it was a long drive. I will say, the kiddos were awesome and the views beautiful. We stopped in a small town, Anaconda, for some gas and to replenish snacks. You don't hear towns named like that too often, leaving it noteworthy.

When we reached the Lid Creek campsite in Hungry Horse National Forest, it was about 6:00, which meant the majority of the evening would be spend setting up the tent and getting everything situated. Since there was a fire ban, we dusted off the trusty propane burners and griddle to make a camp worthy grilled cheese sandwich feast for dinner....and it would have been, but we were figuring out temperatures with the propane and dinner ended up scorched to a black crisp, worse than a forgotten marshmallow too close to a flame. Luckily, I only used half a loaf of bread for the burned sacrifice to the propane Gods, so we were able to rectify the mess with golden brown, cheesy deliciousness for round 2.

Lincoln proudly "marked" one of the trees and told us all about it. The kiddos all took to the hammock as soon as it was set up. We explored the campsite a bit and think we got pretty lucky with out #4 slot. It was a quick walk to the "vaulted toilet" and garbage bins, next to a very small stream, and a short stroll to the Hungry Horse Reservoir. Looking back on the trip, we would have liked to have had a campground a little closer to town, since it took up about a half hour just to get to the Hungry Horse Dam and man the roads were curvy and fairly narrow.

The camp "host" came and chatted with us a bit about the fire ban and bear safety. He said he wasn't trying to be a "fearmonger" with the bear talk, but it was important to know there was a risk and we were camping in their territory. He asked if we had bear spray, to which Maverick confidently and quickly responded, "yes!" ....Lehi and I just went with the flow, knowing that was on our purchase list but it didn't actually happen. Whoops! We were really good about trash disposal and keeping anything with odors (including hygiene things like deodorant) in the van to avoid bear curiosity.

Maverick and Lincoln cheated while playing Old Maid against Lehi, telling each other what cards they had and making it pretty obvious which card to pick to complete their matches. They were all smiles and giggled the whole time, too.

It took me laying down in the tent next to Brielle's cot to get her to sleep that night, which really isn't too surprising since it was a new place and place to sleep. When she gave into sleep, we got the boys ready for bed, too. Lehi and I enjoyed the quiet, kid-free outside for a bit longer, then I called it quits while Lehi listened to his audiobook in the hammock. At one point in the night, I heard Lincoln unzip his sleeping bad, release pent-up air in his bowels, pause, and then zip it back up again. Oh the joys of camping!

We quickly learned that Montana doesn't really believe in early nights, since it didn't actually get dark until 11:00 pm (per Lehi's report, I didn't last that long 😉). It wasn't too cold, but you certainly needed a sleeping bag of some sort. I slept fairly well, considering my 8-month preggo belly. But man did my hips and back hurt in the morning. Stretching and slow movements were key for the first 10-15 minutes of waking.

The next morning, we had a hardy bacon and eggs breakfast during which Maverick spotted a deer wandering next to our site. He also won an awesome brother award by pulling out bubbles from the van and keeping Brielle entertained. We set off to explore the dam and Hungry Horse/Flathead. On the way to the dam, we stopped at a pull of spots to take in the beauty of Hungry Horse Reservoir and get a better look at the huge nest we saw on the drive up. A small group of bikers was also stopped and told us it was an Osprey nest. The female sat in the nest while the male perched in a nearby tree. Our biking friends were kind enough to offer to take our picture--so we were actually able to get a family shot for once!

We decided to explore the Hungry Horse area for our first day and stay (fairly) close to the campsite. At the dam, we looked at the map a little (Mav & Linc pointed to where we were camping), noted there was a Mount Grant (which was pretty cool to Lincoln), and decided to walk to the visitor's center at the dam. Unfortunately, there were some workers and trucks blocking the sidewalk about halfway up the dam, so after waiting around awkwardly for a few minutes, we decided to walk back and start our hike! Lehi randomly picked one, Clayton Creek, and we jumped in the van. Ideally, we would have researched hike options, but with practically no service, we just went for it! After a bit of driving past the campsite, we finally found the trailhead. It was hot and pretty much uphill the whole time, but there was a decent amount of shade along the way. The wildflowers had me in love and the views were beautiful. Lehi carried Brielle pretty much the whole time, which was needed because a lot of the path was very overgrown. The boys had to put their arms over their faces to make their way through it. We deemed Lincoln our champion hiker, with little to no complaints from him. ...I wish the same could be said for Maverick. 😉 We had no idea how long we hiked, how far, or where the end was, but after about an hour and a half of going UP, we decided it was probably a good idea to start heading down. Lehi took Brielle a bit farther while I headed down the mountain with the boys. Up might have been more tiring, but the boys fell down a lot more going the opposite direction. (Lincoln's "champ

title might have been close to being revoked). The boys fought over who got to "go first" and bickered about other random things pretty much the whole way down. At one point, Maverick remarked, "this is the worst vacation of my life." Needless to say, we were all ready to be done. Lehi met us at the van a few minutes later, his descent being much faster than ours, even though he went about 10 minutes past what we did. He found a small creek but didn't go all the way to the end of the hike (which we still don't know what is waiting at the end). About 200 yards from the van was another small path I decided to peek at...and right there was an awesome waterfall and creek, that the boys thought was so awesome, of course. In retrospect...we did find out (on the last day of the trip, when we actually went into the visitor's center) Clayton Creek, was ranked "hard/intermediate level" being 5.3 miles with a 1,500 ft elevation gain. We guessed that we did about 4-mile round trip...which we thought was pretty good with a 8-month preggo, 7/5-year-old and a carried 1.5-year-old.

After the hike, we headed back to our camp and ~~walked~~ drove the short distance to the reservoir for some lake play. Lehi forgot Brielle's puddle jump (he saw lifejackets on the pack list and didn't register the puddle jump), so it was a bit of a juggling act, keeping her happy and the boys, but they all had so much fun. Brielle thinks she needs to "swim" with her arms in any water she finds. She is becoming quite the fish. We all enjoyed finding rocks to skip. I will say, this lake had prime skipping rocks....and a lot of them! Lehi told the boys he would pay the first one to dunk their head in the water $1 for being brave. Maverick cashed in on that one, even though it took a few attempts. He got another bravery buck when he let Lehi throw him in the water when they had swam a distance out. The water was a little chilly, but that didn't stop us from getting in. And seriously, those mountain views!! We had to get Lincoln to empty his swim trunk pocket of all the rocks he collected before we left. Man, that kid.

Dinner was a super fancy Top Roman (options really were limited with the griddle) and the boys were in heaven. While making it, Maverick asked what the packet was that Lehi added to the noodles. He explained it was the seasoning and flavor. It made the noodles taste like something--chicken, beef, shrimp, etc. While slurping his noodles, Maverick exclaimed, "Wait. They have a shrimp kind? Can we get that someday?"

Brielle crashed hard (as we all did), with her book on top of her. I may or may not have taken an hour nap beside her while waiting for her to fall asleep. Maverick also wanted us to take a picture of his messed-up Oreo, which was pretty much our staple dessert every night. In fact, Lehi said, "Extra Oreos for anyone who doesn't complain on this hike!"

The next day was our Glacier National Park exploration trip. We woke up early, got ready, and had bagels and cream cheese in the van on our way into town. While in some traffic while approaching the park, we noticed some signs that said, "reservations/tickets required,' so we pulled off for some gas and asked the gas station employees if they knew where we could get tickets. They said we should be able to purchase them in the park or online. We drove a little further into town to try to get some service, (very slowly) loaded the park page, and discovered to get on the Going to the Sun Road (that ran through the majority of the park) before 5:00 pm you needed a reservation. We decided to go chat with someone in the park to get more clarification/information...especially because there were no open reservations for the day/the next. We did see a park pass we could get but were not sure what the limitations were there. To the experts, we drove!

There were a few small shops before getting into the actual park, we went inside one to give the kiddos a car break and do some touristy things. After browsing, we got in line to get into the park. The first ranger was so friendly, kind, and helpful, he set the bar high for any of the others. We were directed to the information area where we pulled up and spoke with (a not as helpful) ranger. She told us that all reservations were full, but we could drive up to the East side of Glacier and we could get a park pass that would allow us on the Going to the Sun Road (aka 90% of the attractions/places to see) after 5:00 pm. There were a few lake/area to see, like Two Medicine and Many Glacier that we could visit while waiting. We figured that was most likely our best option, so we drove a couple hours to the East side. We stopped in a small town on the way for a snack (Brownies....the pastries we got were ok, nothing amazing/noteworthy). It was a beautiful drive there--although the windy road threatened to get the best of Maverick and me. We passed Two Medicine, but decided to go to the East entrance for park passes so we would be set for that evening. (Pic below was Two Medicine)

Another friendly, informative ranger helped us purchase our park pass and let us know that Many Glacier was closed (scratch that off our ways-to-productively-fill-time-until-5:00-list, thanks for telling us West side ranger). It was quickly discovered the East side was not nearly as busy...most likely because it was pretty pathetic as far as things to do. The entrance to the West had a good handful of shops and places to eat, close local towns, etc...this had a lodge, grocery store, gift shop, and 3 of the 4 places to eat were closed or not open on Tuesdays. Just our luck. Lehi looked up places to eat, and since we were approaching lunchtime, found a place in Browning, about 45 minutes away, that had 4.8 stars. And with a name like Billie Jo's Home of the Bigfoot, we just couldn't resist. And so we drove again. It was not nearly as pretty, but we were excited to eat somewhere local and have more of a sit-down lunch. ..and then we saw Browning. It honestly was such a sad town. The vast majority of the homes were not maintained/cared for and it was really run down. It was a little weird driving through a neighborhood, rather than the main street for this restaurant, but we stuck to the GPS directions. And then there it was a house with a bunch of painted signs out front. As we passed, a small child from (presumably) the house next door was running around naked. Checking reviews again, we discovered those 4.8 stars came from a whopping 13 reviews. Lehi and I looked at each other and agreed that it was not a place we felt good about eating at, despite our (almost) hour's drive to get there. Thus, we found ourselves handing out camping snacks and heading back to East Glacier. We opted to eat at the lodge, which was busy and overpriced with ok food and terrible service. Yay for being tourists with limited options. ;) We threw around the idea of going back to Two Medicine to explore, but with it being about an hour out and having spent a lot of time in the van, we went with option 2--browse the local gift shops and play in the small creek behind the lodge (which the kids did love). Around 4:15, we parked at the Going to the Sun Road entrance line, asked some people if that was indeed the line they were in/waiting for, and walked to the visitor's center--which was small but informative, and better than sitting in the van. Finally, 5:00 rolled around, waiting cars deck-shuffled into one lane to get on the Going-to-the-Sun Road and we started the drive through the park, back to the West side.

Despite it being a long day, with a lot more driving than we anticipated, the Going to the Sun Road was soooooo worth the wait. Oh my gosh, it was stunning. It had a bunch of places to pull off to take pictures/get out and explore along the way. Pictures do not do it justice, and we have way more than I will share here, for space purposes. I think it took about 3 hours to get to the West entrance, but it certainly didn't feel that long. For the first 10 minutes or so, there was a bunch of cars parked on the side (and not-so-much-to-the-side) of the road, all gawking at something. Since we couldn't go anywhere, we parked, Lehi got out, and asked someone, "so...what are we looking at?" The man totally geeked out and excitingly exclaimed, "there is a bear!" And sure enough, there was a bear, eating berries. Lehi cracked a few Dad jokes revolving bears & berries, which Maverick laughed at. (Lincoln fell asleep for the first bit of the drive). In addition to the spectacular views of mountains, waterfalls, lakes, trees, wildflowers, (and the bear), we saw a fox, Bighorn sheep, mountain goats, elk, and ground squirrels that Mav was particularly keen on spotting/telling us about. We totally lucked out in the Wildlife department. We didn't get a picture of the fox, which Lehi will never forgive me for, because (in his words) I was "too busy making sure Maverick/Lincoln saw it when I should have been taking a picture."

While "ohhh-ing" and "ahhhh-ing" and "this is so beautiful-ing", there were a couple memorable quotes. First from Lehi, "They could have filmed Lord of the Rings in Montana. Look at those mountains!!" and Maverick, telling us after Lehi was careful not to drop his phone taking a picture, "When I am an engineer, I'm going to work hard to build a parachute for your phone, in case you drop it."

Although some of the forests had been burned, there was a special beauty in these views

Aside from the picture/quick exploring stops, we made a legit stop at Lake McDonald, the biggest destination within Glacier. The lake is about 10 miles long and provides a great view of the mountains (granted, it was pretty overcast when we made it there). The water so clear, that you would see a ways before losing the bottom. It was also late (around 8:00), making the water not idea swimming temperatures, but we were able to splash around a bit and (one of the kiddos' favorite lake pastimes as of late), throw rocks. Brielle left the lake kicking and screaming (literally). After a quick camp-worthy hot dog dinner, we were all ready for bed after a long, not-quite-as-we-planned, but still awesome day.

Maverick was a little sad he hadn't seen any stars at the camp yet (we usually let them stay up late, but it takes forever to get dark!), so I set an alarm for 1:00 am to wake up, go outside, and look at the stars.

1:00 rolls around, I woke up Lehi and the boys (which took some time), we slumped to the tent door, unzipped it, took a few steps out, looked up, AND.....it was overcast. Couldn't see a darn thing. Oh the crap Lehi gave me the next morning for not checking before waking them all up! 😅 Lesson learned.

Our last day for exploring! And we were determined to find a way back to Lake McDonald without going on the Going to the Sun Road (aka no access until 5:00 pm). Naturally, we woke up to rain pounding on the tent roof. Lehi and I looked at each other and our still sleeping kiddos, and decided to wait it out a bit, at least until they woke up. It was a later start to the day than we wanted, but it all worked out just fine. The rain sounded a lot worse on the tent than it actually was (luckily) and it was supposed to totally clear up in a few hours. We decided on donuts for breakfast, rather than trying to cook oatmeal in the rain on the propane stove. We did a quick stop at the Hungry Horse Dam visitor's center--where we learned the town was named after two horses, Tex and Judy, who wandered off during the winter and made their way back home, starved and looking rough as you might anticipate. Someone wrote an article about it and the name Hungry Horse stuck to the town! We also got a paper with all the hikes in the area...and we realized Clayton was not the best choice for our dynamics this year. 😉 Maverick got a pamphlet about the dam and how it generated power (which he loved) and all the kids got some complementary coloring-type books about the dam. Oh how we wished we would have kept walking the first day and gone all the way to the visitors center!

Lehi found a shop in Whitefish with donuts that sounded awesome, so we drove out there. Whitefish was a little gem (in stark contrast to poor Browning). Main street was (Lehi would roll his eyes at this word choice) so cute! Lots of little shops, restaurants, hanging flower baskets, etc. Pretty much what we wished more of the East side of Glacier was like. We walked into the donut place, discovered it was more of a high-end shop than we were looking for, and ended up walking around town for a bit, popping in and out of a few stores. We left without donuts, but Lehi picked up a sweet hat! There were a few grocery stores we passed on our way in that we decided would have donuts sufficient for our needs (along with some snacks/breakfast for the drive back home the next morning).

While we didn't anticipate our donut detour to be quite as long as it was, Lehi and I studied the map of Glacier, trying to pin-point areas we could get into, without getting on the Going to the Sun Road. We settled on Fish Creek campground, which looked like it might have a way to Lake McDonald. Maverick said he REALLY wanted to go swimming again, so we were doing our best to make that happen. I think we discovered a secret gem with Fish Creek. We found a picnic area with bathrooms with flushing toilets (this is an exciting discovery after going a few days without one), tables to eat at, and a path to Lake McDonald. Score! More swimming, rocks, and exploring for us. Brielle also found a stick she became rather attached to. Lincoln also let Lehi go underwater with him (for a bravery buck). At some point, Brielle brought Lincoln his shoes and Maverick, sitting on the rocks said, "Man. I wish someone would bring me my shoes." Passive-aggressive twerp! He has Lehi and I laughing.

We all got out of the water and decided to walk around the lake for a bit, to help us dry off before lunch/getting in the van. At one point, Lincoln lagged begin us a few feet and then I hear him yelling something. I figured he had slipped (there were some slippery rocks) so I waited for him to catch up to us and asked him what happened. He pointed to the water and said there was a snake! I stepped on it and then ran to you! Sure enough, right where he was pointing, a snake slithered to the top of a rock. Lehi and I (with extremely grateful hearts that he hadn't been bit) told him how proud we were of how he handled that situation and how he made a good choice to run away as soon as he saw it. Lehi leaned over to me and told me how we had all walked right past it and we were pretty lucky. (With these pictures, can we just appreciate how clear and beautiful that water is??) We had a quick lunch at the picnic tables, featuring peanut butter and jelly on hot dog buns since that is the only bread we had left (if someone hadn't burned 4 grilled cheese sandwiches, we would have been fine).

Our sneaky path into Lake McDonald may or may not have somehow led to a point on the Going to the Sun Road that was pass the check-in/ticket booth. It was totally not intentional, but it worked out in our favor. Plus, we were only an hour or so before 5:00, when we would have been able to get in with our park pass anyways. The day before, we noted a few spots we wanted to get out and explore more today, so we hit up McDonald Falls and Trail of the Cedars. McDonald Falls overlook was breathtaking, but if you go the opposite direction of the platforms, there is a path that leads to the top of one of the falls! We worked our way down there and played in the water/took in the site and sounds. The boys loved it. We did learn the big rocks were really slippery, so the boys pretty much always had to have hold of a hand and stay by Lehi and I. I think it was one of my favorite places that we explored (and not just for the name 😏) On our way back up to the van, Maverick warned a few people on their way down that the big rocks were slippery!

Trail of the Cedars was about as perfect as a hike as you get for littles. It was shaded, flat, and short (1-mile round trip). Of course, about 5 minutes in, Brielle decided to poop, and I didn't bring the diaper bag, so Lehi carried her for a lot of it, stinky bum and all. At one point in the hike, you can branch-off and go on a different trail head to a lake, which is something we want to do next time! Maverick was all about going on that path (it was uphill and looked pretty cool) but we reminded him that it was a lot longer than we had been walking and we didn't have water/food AND Brielle needed changed. We kept walking about 5 minutes and Maverick found himself complaining about being tired. Good thing we talked him out of the additional 3-mile hike! The boys kept asking to have their picture taken by a specific thing, Maverick told us it was so we could update his picture on LDS tools (hahaha). Lehi had Maverick take a picture of him and I...and it was about as good as you would expect from a 7-year-old photographer. But we tried!

We ended our last day with some shop hopping in West Glacier, ice cream, and huckleberry pie. (There were soooo many places advertising huckleberry x, y, z, and especially pie). And Lehi and I both agreed, it was good pie (which you would hope being $8 for a small slice). Between us and the boys, we sampled all the ice cream flavors but one, which I might have to get next time. They were all awesome--even Maverick's vanilla was super good (Lehi featured a double scoop of mountain mint and huckleberry, Lincoln birthday cake, and my huckleberry). Brielle found the stuffed animals at one of the shops, which she refused to let go of (but I also refused to buy). It was a carry-out-the-crying-child moment for me. Maverick was done with pictures when I asked him and Lincoln to stand in front of the purple truck, his facial expression might say as much. We also started a new (legit) family trip tradition--of picking a sticker to put on our cooler. I didn't think it would be such a difficult decision, but Lehi and the boys proved to be very indecisive.

Brielle didn't even make it to her camp crib before she crashed. (Technically she fell asleep in the van before we even made it home). I worked on putting her to in bed and getting the tent packed/organized for our early departure--the girl didn't even flinch while I was unzipping/moving things around. Lehi took the boys to the reservoir one last time to find Mount Grant. The sunset made it pretty perfect. It was some good boy time and a solid choice for last fun on the trip. When they got back, we put the boys to bed, and readied everything we could for the morning. We left bright and early. The road trip home was pretty uneventful (yay!). We did stop in Idaho Falls for Reed's Dairy for dinner...and may or may not have added a half-gallon of chocolate milk, (ironically) huckleberry milk, and ice cream. (Brielle in her camp chair the morning we left is a pretty good depiction of how tired we all were).