Posts Tagged With: mt

Lewis and Clark Caverns State Park

Posted on September 24, 2016 by Heather Gebbia

After leaving Glacier, we stopped for a couple of nights in Whitehall, Montana at Lewis & Clark Caverns State Park. This was so nice because we really missed staying at state parks. While we were visiting Grand Tetons, Yellowstone and Glacier our only options were crowded RV parks. Pulling into our site at this state park was a welcome change. Look at all that space!

Lots of room for Chris and the boys to play.

And Fat Cat loved it too!

We did the cavern tour while we were there which was really cool. This is the entrance to the cavern.

Inside the cavern is a small slide that everyone on the tour has to go down to get to the next section of the cave. It was a lot of fun and the highlight of the tour for the kids. Sorry the picture is blurry. It’s hard to get a good picture of kids in motion in the dark!

A few cave pictures.

I liked the room all lit up in purple!

This was a beautiful place to spend a couple of days after all the fun we had at Glacier.

After this we moved on to Cody, Wyoming and visited the east side of Yellowstone from there, but I already wrote about that as part of my posts about Yellowstone. You can read about that here: Yellowstone: Fishing Bridge and Cody, WY.

Categories: Montana | Tags: cave tour, ditching suburbia, full time rv'ing, fulltime families, lewis and clark caverns state park, Montana, mt, whitehall | 2 Comments

More Random Pictures from Glacier

Posted on September 20, 2016 by Heather Gebbia

This post is basically just some more pictures of things we did at Glacier that don’t really seem to fit into a blog post all by themselves. There is so much to do at Glacier, we didn’t even get to it all so I hope to return there someday.

These first few pictures are from Avalanche Lake. The lake was beautiful, but the water level seemed really low.

Avalanche Lake

Avalanche Lake

Avalanche Lake

One evening we brought a picnic dinner to Lake McDonald. We even met another Fulltime Family there!

Lake McDonald

Lake McDonald

Then one day we went to Two Medicine Lake. This lake was good for skipping rocks.

Two Medicine Lake

Two Medicine Lake

Two Medicine Lake

Two Medicine Lake

While visiting Glacier we spent most of the time on the west side in Hungry Horse, MT at Mountain Meadow RV Park. This park is a very nice park, but unfortunately we didn’t have a great campsite. Our site was really small and un-level, and they didn’t have any other sites we could move to. What I liked about the park is it had more of a state park feel. The sites were spread out with some trees and privacy between each one rather than all lined up together like most RV parks. Many of the sites were large and very nice, so if we ever return there I hope to get a better site. And they had a really nice common area to hang out and play games or sit by the pond.

Mountain Meadow RV Park

Mountain Meadow RV Park

Finally, the boys earned their Junior Ranger badges.

Glacier National Park is definitely one of the most beautiful places we have ever been. I really hope we can go back there again someday. Coming up next I have one last post about Glacier, or I should say it’s about Glacier’s sister park up in Alberta, Canada: Waterton Lakes.

Categories: Montana, National Parks | Tags: avalanche lake, ditching suburbia, full time rv'ing, fulltime families, glacier national park, hungry horse, junior ranger, lake mcdonald, Montana, mountain meadow rv park, mt, two medicine lake, west glacier | 2 Comments

Glacier: Going to the Sun and St. Mary Falls

Posted on September 17, 2016 by Heather Gebbia

In my first post about Glacier National Park I mentioned the long shuttle bus ride up to Logan Pass. Because that took so long we drove our truck the next day. What a difference! We were up to Logan Pass within an hour, and the drive was spectacular!

Going to the Sun Road

At one point beyond Logan Pass we went through a tunnel that literally looked like we were “Going to the Sun”!

Jackson Glacier

We stopped to hike to St. Mary Falls which was incredible! The trailhead parking lot was full so we ended up parking at the Sunrift Gorge trailhead just a little further down the road. That turned out to be such a blessing! I think the round-trip hike from the St. Mary Falls trailhead is only a mile or two, but from the Sunrift Gorge trailhead the round-trip hike was about 4 miles. Trust me, it’s worth it! The trail starts under this bridge. To the right you can walk up some stairs to see the Sunrift Gorge, then go to the left and walk the short trail to Baring Falls.

After Baring Falls, we hiked along the St. Mary Lake which was such a spectacular turquoise color. I was so glad we had to park farther away; otherwise, we would have missed this.

St. Mary Lake

We also got to see a moose along the trail. I’m not sure if you can see it, but there is a moose in between the trees in the middle of the picture below.

Soon we arrived at St. Mary Falls. Two waterfalls flowing into the most beautiful blue-green water — amazing!

St. Mary Falls

What a beautiful day! Next up, my favorite hike we did at Glacier — Grinnell Glacier.

Categories: Montana, National Parks | Tags: baring falls, ditching suburbia, full time rv'ing, fulltime families, glacier national park, going to the sun road, logan pass, Montana, mt, st. mary falls, st. mary lake, sunrift gorge | 3 Comments

Glacier National Park

Posted on September 11, 2016 by Heather Gebbia

Glacier National Park in northern Montana is one of the most beautiful places I have ever seen. I know it seems like I say that about every place, but seriously it is!

Going to the Sun Road is the main road that goes through the park. It’s a very scenic drive, but with many tight twists and turns. We were not sure if we should drive our big dually truck on that road, so on our first day we parked at the Apgar Visitor Center and rode the shuttle bus up to Logan Pass. The shuttle bus took a really long time! From the time we parked at the visitor center it was about 2 1/2 – 3 hours before we finally got to Logan Pass to start our hike to Hidden Lake. It took about an hour of waiting in line just to catch the first shuttle bus. That bus only takes you as far as Avalanche Lake where you wait to catch another bus to continue on to Logan Pass. During the long bus rides we realized there shouldn’t be any problem driving our own truck up that road which is what we did the next day.

Anyway, it was so nice to finally get up there and get started on this amazing hike! The hike starts right behind the Logan Pass Visitor Center. The beginning of the hike was crowded, but started to thin out the further we went. These are the views at the beginning of the trail. It was surprising to still see snow in August!

A little past this point we got our first glimpse of the incredible blue-green water of Hidden Lake. Many of the lakes at Glacier are this beautiful turquoise color which is caused by the glacial melt. Speaking of which, if you want to see any of the remaining glaciers, plan to come soon. The glaciers are melting and are expected to be all gone by 2030.

Hidden Lake

Most of the crowds stop at the Hidden Lake overlook and turn around, but we decided to continue on the trail down to the lake. This is not to be missed in my opinion, although the hike back up was quite challenging.

We rested on the little beach at the bottom for awhile and enjoyed some snacks. Just look at that beautiful, clear water!

Chris taught the kids how to skip rocks over the lake.

I enjoyed this spot so much; I didn’t really want to leave, but we had a long hike back and then another long bus ride back so it was time to go. After climbing back up the hill we were rewarded with getting to watch these really cute mountain goats.

Thankfully the bus ride back went much quicker! There was an empty bus ready for us as soon as we got back to the Visitor Center. And on the way back down the bus driver told us he would take us all the way back to Apgar rather than dropping us off at Avalanche because this was his last ride of the day and he was going home. What a blessing!

The next day we skipped the bus and took our own truck. That was so much faster and very scenic! I’ll write about that in the next post.

Categories: Montana, National Parks | Tags: apgar visitor center, ditching suburbia, full time rv'ing, fulltime families, glacial melt, glacier national park, going to the sun road, hidden lake, logan pass, Montana, mountain goats, mt, west glacier | 7 Comments

Yellowstone: Mammoth Hot Springs

Posted on August 28, 2016 by Heather Gebbia

If you are following along and missed my first 2 posts about Yellowstone, you can find them here: Yellowstone: Geysers and Hot Springs and Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone.

After our stay in West Yellowstone, we moved up to the little town of Gardiner, Montana which is at the north entrance to Yellowstone. Yellowstone is a huge park and it seemed to work out best for us to move to different sections of the park rather than driving for several hours each day.

My parents were still with us for the first couple of days in Gardiner. We stayed at Rocky Mountain RV Park. They had a cute little mini golf course that the kids enjoyed playing with Gramma and Grampa.

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Gardiner was a really cute town just like West Yellowstone. We enjoyed walking around town, checking out souvenir shops and eating great pizza.

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The Roosevelt Arch was cool.

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Also the beautiful Yellowstone River runs through town.

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Gardiner is very close to the Mammoth Hot Springs section of Yellowstone. We enjoyed visiting there with Mom and Dad. We walked through the lower and upper terraces. These terraces are so interesting and unique. It’s hard to see in the picture, but there is hot water running down this terrace. It’s amazing to see this and wonder how these steps/terraces were formed. It was so pretty!

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This section looked like snow! But it wasn’t snow; it actually had very hot water running down it.

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My cute parents enjoying their last day at Yellowstone. We had so much fun with them visiting with us! I sure wish they would sell their house and join us on the road. 🙂

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I can’t even explain how amazing this place is. You just have to see it for yourself. I mean here we are in the middle of all these mountains, and smack in the middle of it all is this small section of hot springs creating the most unusual landscape.

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No, that is not snow. It sure looks like it, but it’s actually very hot!

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During the week after Mom and Dad left we visited the Boiling River. That was really fun! You can sit in this river where the water is cold and hot at the same time. Boiling water from the hot springs flows down into the cold Yellowstone River. It felt really weird. Sometimes I would feel a rush of cold river water and the next steaming hot spring water. You had to be careful not to get too close to the hot spring water because it really was boiling.

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Another evening we drove down to Lamar Valley to try to see some wildlife. We were surprised that so far we haven’t seen very much wildlife around Yellowstone besides lots of elk. We heard Lamar Valley would be the place to see some bison and that was the truth! They were everywhere, even in the road! I was so excited to be first in line at this bison traffic stop. What a show!

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