An Ending and a Beginning

The beginning of our epic road trip started with an ending.  Saturday morning we went back to our house one last time to clean out the refrigerator, return the cable equipment, make sure we really had everything, give a few more food items to a neighbor, take pictures by the front door, etc.  It was kind of odd to see the house totally empty.  Oh, and the boys visited the Lego store one last time for a Space Needle Architecture set.

And then it was finally time to get on the road.  Day 1 was a long one - Seattle to Missoula.  We had hoped to stay in Idaho -- there was a nice little hotel in Wallace, a town with some silver mining history that might have been interesting.  But no, the hotel was fully booked for the ATV convention in town.  Probably good that we didn't get the last room available there!  So Missoula was the plan, even though it took us a little out of the way to Glacier.

I have no memories of driving across Washington except the wind farms.  I think it was such a relief to be on our way, and also the sense of "oh my gosh, what have I done."  We crossed into Idaho and figured it was time for some dinner and a place to stretch our legs.  Coeur D'Alene has a wonderful park with a playground at the north end of the lake.  S and I walked over to the lake to dip our feet in the water.  After dinner, we got back in the car and finally made it to Missoula at about 10pm.

The next day we headed north to Glacier.  The kids had their first A and W experience (mmmmm!  root beer floats!)  Flathead Lake was really pretty but the best was yet to come.  We got to Kalispell where our hotel was, looked at the clock, and figured we'd just head on into the park.  There were volunteer rangers in the parking lot with telescopes for looking at the sun so we figured why not learn some astronomy too!  Solar flares are pretty cool after all.  We went to the teeny Apgar visitor's center to ask the ranger about hikes to do the next day and she suggested also visiting Lake MacDonald for splashing and tossing rocks.

So we drove up the road a bit, and found a path down to the lake.  While we were getting out of the car, Monkey announced that he does not like lakes and did not want to play there.  But 30 minutes later his clothes were drenched and he was blowing bubbles in the lake and heaving rocks off the bottom to splash.  And of course when it was time to leave we had to drag him out ("But I need to do fwee and a half spwashes first!")  It was such a great spot - glassy lake surrounded by steep tree covered mountains -  I didn't want to leave either!

Back in Kalispell at the Red Lion, the front desk clerk asked me how old the kids were.  When I told her, she gave me 3 small stuffed lions for the kids.  S named his Perseus (ala Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief.  We had all the books in the car with us for his re-reading pleasure.)  G named hers Little Lion and Monkey named his Henry, to go along with Thomas the river otter from Mt. St. Helens and Percy the deer from Mt. Rainier.  Anyone seeing a theme here?