My intent was to be writing these posts daily, but due to
exhaustion I’ve been writing some on the day they happened, and had to go back
to write others. So, I was reminded that
when we were hiking through Glacier, from the first day of hikes, we asked Theo
what animals he thought we would see. We
of course had discussed seeing bears and goats, and that at Yellowstone we’d
look for buffalos. Theo however, kept
mentioning that he was looking in the wild for peacocks. Haha!
I don’t quite know where this came in to play, but for some reason,
every hike Theo talked about the peacocks-and at this point, none had been seen
in the park.
This morning we decided that we could check out of the
Belton Chalet. Even though the night
ended up being smooth, we didn’t want to test our luck, so we called Fairchild
Ait Force Base in Spokane and asked if we could add a day to our original
reservation and fortunately they had room.
We figured we would tour all day on the West side of Glacier and then
Mason and I would just have a long night of driving, but that would give us a
day off in Spokane. It was pouring rain
and the cloud level was low so I was really grateful that we had done the main
drive along the central part of the Going to the Sun road the day prior,
because we wouldn’t have seen much.
Woodrow woke up with a cough and sniffles after our
adventure to Hidden Lake, but we decided that we’d check out the trail we had
originally planned for the day, the Avalanche Creek Trail. This hike was a 4 mile round trip trail with
a 500 foot climb. By this time I
realized that some of the trail descriptions that I had picked out ahead of
time, thinking they wouldn’t be too bad, were a little crazy, so I was a wee
bit nervous about the length of this hike.
The trail head starts after a much smaller, paved, wheelchair accessible
path called the Trail of Cedars, so I expected with the rain, we might just
check that area out and that we wouldn’t actually make it all the way to
Avalanche Lake. We got the boys in their
coats, rain jackets, and put Theo in his rain boots, and he started
crying. He was pretty much crying for 15
minutes when Mason was finally like just cry it out little man. I was thinking that we were really done for
the day, even though it had just begun.
Somehow the power of chatter just got Theo and I off on a good foot and
we started talking about Santa and Christmas...I don’t really remember what
started it, I think there was a pine tree where I mentioned it looking like a
Christmas Tree. So, all the talk of
Christmas, and his birthday, and singing songs, here we were making our way
along the Avalanche Creek Trail.
At the start of the trail, we were right along the creek
which was full of fast flowing water.
The elevation climbs weren’t too steep or frequent, so the climb didn’t
feel too bad. Woodrow was really good
and enjoyed his usual animal crackers, and then fell asleep on the way. I think he actually loved having the water
drip on his face. We went in and out of
feeling rained on since the trees blocked some of the rain. The path was loooooooong though. It ended up taking us two hours, and I was
feeling discouraged when we’d pass people and I’d happily say, “we’re getting
closer, right?” and they didn’t ever say yes.
Sometimes it was, “weeeeeelllll, almost.” One time someone said, “another
mile or so…” at this point I was pretty sure we were going to turn around because
the first mile just felt like it had been forever and I couldn’t imagine that
we had the same distance yet to go.
Eventually we made it to the lake and it was really
pretty. This ended up being my favorite
hike (clearly Mason’s was the hike from Hell the day prior), just because it
was constantly changing along the way.
There was always something pretty to look at. The kiddos were really well behaved for the
most part and we had a good time. By the
time we reached the end, we were pretty soaked through and my legs were tired,
and Mason’s shoulders were sore! We
dried the boys off and put them in the pjs, even though it was only like
2:30pm. At this point we figured we’d
seen all that we were going to see from Glacier. We made a quick pit stop at the Lake McDonald
Lodge and then headed on our way to Fairchild AFB.
The drive was really pretty, but it wasn’t long before we
were out of mountain territory and in to the flat lands again, which surprised
us both because we both imagined Western Montana to be very hilly. The drive was uneventful, although Mason and
I were pretty hungry as we got closer and closer to Spokane, so we ended up
ordering from PF Changs and taking it back to the base. The boys were super happy to have Easy
Mac! Woohoo!
I can’t tell you how amazing it was to pull onto this Air
Force Base. Mason and I had talked about
being stationed here, and he had attended SERE training out here several years
ago, but it just felt like home. Being
on an Air Force base just felt like exactly what we needed. The room was awesome! It had a living room, kitchen, and
bedroom. Surprisingly, we ended up
getting there around 7:30pm and so the kids got to eat, have a warm bath, and
go to bed. We put Theo on the sofa pull
out and Woodrow in his crib-yay for Mason and I having our own room so we didn’t
have to go to sleep when they did although it was pretty close to it!
No comments:
Post a Comment