From Yellowstone, we drove up to Whitefish.. which is at the entrance of Glacier National Park.  I was absolutely amazed at all of the beautiful landscape through Montana.  It was just gorgeous driving through the very green hilly fields with the huge big Rocky Mountains surrounding us.  As we drove further north, we entered a much more mountainous landscape with gorgeous lakes and pine trees.  I never quite understood the appeal of Montana before, but I now know I would love to come back and explore this state more!  Maybe one day when I grow up and become rich I can have a ranch… with a stream running through it, and a small airport in the back to fly me back to AZ for sunshine and warmth, shopping, and some good restaurants…  And by ranch, I mean, a really gorgeous piece of property to use for photographs… I don’t think the getting up at 5am to work in the fields and livestock is really what I have in mind here.

Anyway, here are a few images from the 4th of July.  I was determined to stay in the good ol’ USofA to celebrate one of my favorite holidays.  I’m glad we did, as we had a blast in this little town that celebrates fireworks over the lake.  The hard part about traveling north for the 4th… it doesn’t get dark until 10:30 at night!  Whew… late night… especially for some kids that are used to going to bed at 7:30 when the sun goes down in AZ!

Glacier National Park is absolutely breathtaking.  Even my kids enjoyed every minute looking out the windows at all of the gorgeous scenery.  The rivers, numerous waterfalls, windy roads, dense forrest, amazing enormous mountains, etc… We climbed from the bottom of the valley as we weaved along the river all the way to the top of the continental divide on this teeny tiny road… it was a beautiful rainy day… the rain was very sporadic with the sun popping through every once in a while.  It made for perfect photos and the kids got a kick out of driving up through the clouds and going higher than them.  When we reached the top of the continental divide, we got out and let the kids play in the snow on the glacier.  Who would of thought on July 5th we would be building a snowman?

The interesting thing was on the way down through the backside of the continental divide, the vegetation changed drastically.  It was much more dry… no fern, moss, rivers, and waterfalls.  Lots of pine trees, but reminded me more of the pine forests in AZ, not a tropical rainforest like the other side.  

Bear Grylls crossed a log bridge on Man vs. Wild much higher than this… Parker thought it would be fun to try… UM… that would be a NO WAY!

Ryan was seriously in heaven.  For some reason, he became obsessed with waterfalls.  We had to stop so he could take a picture of every single one of them (OK… quite a few of them).  It was pretty cute.  

After leaving Glacier National Park, we crossed over the border and headed into Canada.  On the north side of the border, the National Park is called Waterton Lakes.  We spent the rest of the afternoon exploring that gorgeous little town, lake, and more wildlife.

The highlight of our drive into Waterton was the grizzly and her 2 NEW cubs.  We saw them both on our way in and way out  of the park!  It was really fun.  Kate, however, was very disappointed (you know in the 2-year old way… read, tantrum), that she couldn’t pet the bears.  She just wanted to pet the baby ones… because they won’t bite her.  They will just kiss her fingers.  They are babies and are really really nice.  Yeah, right.  Sorry Kate.  

Waterton Lakes… hmmm… some famous hotel.  It was pretty.  The name is not important, right?

Ha!  This might have given us the biggest laugh of the day.  There were so many ground squirrels running around… holes EVERYWHERE!  Kate was having so much fun chasing these little guys.  The funny thing is I think they were having more fun playing hide and seek with her.  They would run down a hole… she would call after them to come back, and they would pop their heads up and stare at her.  She thought she was in total control and loved every minute!

That night we pulled in to my brother’s house about 11pm… and are enjoying spending time with family and exploring Calgary and the surrounding areas.  Up next… Banff and Lake Loise!

We survived the first half of our very ambitious DRIVE to Calgary!  We arrived last night, exactly 39 1/2 DRIVING hours and 2000 miles later.  I am soooo proud of my kids.  They did amazing in the car!  They are not big movie watchers and we have an old Yukon (pre-kids days), so there is no installed DVD player.  Occasionally I will turn on my laptop for them to watch a movie, but for the most part, they do great coloring, reading, and playing car games.  

The first night, we stopped at Nana and Papa’s in Mapleton, UT.  It was a quick overnight stop, but the kids had fun playing in the pirate ship, doll house, and going on 4-wheel drive rides with Papa.  I’ll post more about that on our return trip when we will spend a full week there.

Then, we headed up to Yellowstone and met my brother’s family there in a beautiful cabin in West Yellowstone.  The kids were thrilled to see their cousins, and we had a blast seeing Yellowstone with them.  It was 2 days full of more driving, hiking, walking, and lots of sightseeing!  The highlight for sure was the wildlife!  

My 3-year old nephew rode with us out to Yellowstone and asked where our DVD player was in the car.  Mike said, “We don’t have one… we just have Nature.”  My two year old Kate turned to Garrett and said, “Yeah, we have NATURE!” as she pointed out the window.  My poor deprived AZ kids were so excited to see trees, rivers, lakes, GREEN landscape, and wildlife.  

Nana and Papa gave the boys cameras for Christmas two years ago and they had a blast taking pictures of all the cool things.  Ahhh… makes their mom proud!

So, the only disappointment was we got to Old Faithful at 9pm (about an hour before sunset) and the sign said they expected it to blow at 9:15 give or take 10 minutes… needless to say, Old FAITHFUL decided not to go until 10:55… well past the last bit of light.  It was a long wait, but the kids got to run crazy… So much for being faithful!

So, 30 minutes into the park, we saw this guy on the side of the road.  We got out of our car and saw a HUGE herd of Buffalo… eventually they all started crossing the road.  It was unreal.

This is Mammoth Springs… very cool and different.  We thought it was fascinating, but Parker could not get past the “rotten egg” smell.  

Yellowstone was so interesting to me.  You would drive through these great valleys of rolling green hills, then through huge rocky mountains covered in pine trees.  And then you would run across these “pick up sticks” fields with more trees fallen down than standing up.  It really was quite interesting, but oddly beautiful.

WATERFALL!  Ryan is so excited about waterfalls!  He was so fun to watch as we got closer to the waters edge and watched the waterfall cascading over the edge.  Kate was very disappointed that there weren’t boats there.  Apparently she wanted to get soaking wet and go over it in a boat.  I think she has watched her brothers do the Raging Waters ride at California Adventure a few too many times!

How cool is this picture?  These two bald eagles were “talking” to us, and really quite fun to watch.  It was about 10:30 at night and soooo dark.  Of course, I didn’t have a tripod, so I pushed my Canon 5D Mark II to its limits and was able to get this image!  All things considered, this is one of the most exciting shots I’ve taken!

Oh, and did I mention that my poor husband tore his calf last week and has to hop through all the hiking on crutches!  He truly is a trooper!