Day 35- June 27- Catch up Day

We've had a couple of issues with the camper so David was going to have to drive a good distance to pick up the part for the slide today. That meant that we were going to be spending a lot of time around the campground – doing laundry, riding our bikes, and just relaxing… Which is not my strong point. We did start the morning off by driving part of the way up to going to the sun road – which is still closed as of today. We did not get great views of the lake due to the overcast sky – that makes the lake looks significantly darker.

These three totally have my heart.

The view of St. Mary's Lake with cloud coverage.

This picture was taken at 9:45 PM – note how light it still is outside even though you can see the moon over chief mountain.

The sky was a really pretty color – on the right is mom and dad's camper and our camper is the shadow cruiser on the left.

Day 34- June 26- Iceberg Lake

We drove up to the Many Glacier area of Glacier National Park and decided to do the Iceberg Lake hike. This was 9.8 miles round-trip. Did I mention that my kids and my husband are troopers?

As I have mentioned before, it appears that Glacier is in peak wildflower season. Here's a look at a ton of the bear grass that was growing on our hike – you can also see some other small wild flowers along the way. It was gorgeous as we hiked through the valley.

We made it to the Ptarmigan Falls which were about halfway before we sat down and had our snack. This Colombian ground squirrel decided to join us and almost called right up on my mom's lap for his snack.

You can see all the wildflowers.

This hike was hot because it was in the sun – but being in the sun means that you have a wide-open view of the beautiful mountains on multiple sides of your location.

My boys may be over the picture taking :-)

We had to cross over snow multiple times. Because it was so hot, we picked up snow and rubbed it on the back of our necks in order to cool down.

Iceberg lake was absolutely gorgeous and primarily still covered in ice. We were amazed at the number of people that were hiking a 10 mile trail. Typically on a longer trail like this, you do not find this many people.

We ate lunch at the lake and then Logan decided to see if he could stand the temperatures as he stood it up to his knees.

We managed to get a somewhat decent picture on the self timer of the camera.

The downside to the lake having so many icebergs still in it was the fact you cannot see the blue of the lake.

The boys thought one of the biggest downfalls of the icebergs in the lake was that they could not skip rocks.

Check out these views of the lake and the surrounding mountains.

In case you were wondering – it is much harder to hike down hill through snow than uphill. That is primarily because the top layer turns to slush and is very slippery and it is hard to get a good grip as you hike downward.

This is the view once you get up the trail a little bit of a different lake.

Up close Bear Grass. It starts blooming from the bottom and finishes when there is nothing point in sticking out of the top.

Oh how my heart longs to live in Montana!!!!!!!

Day 33- June 25- Waterfalls

Our main slide stopped working while we were in Jasper, so we made arrangements with a local man to come and look at it when we were at St. Mary's in East glacier.  David spent the morning dealing with that well my parents, the boys and I all rode our bikes down to the visitor center. Check out some of the beautiful views on our drive down.

After David and the camper repair man, who we will call Randy, finalized all of their work – then we all headed out on a hike to St. Mary's waterfalls and Virginia falls.  Due to not being able to find a parking spot at the St. Mary Falls Trail head – we headed down to a different trail head and also got to see Bering falls. At the base of this Falls – this precious little buck deer was standing there with 15 to 20 people around him. He proceeded to wade out of the water and up into the brush and back into the woods, but did not seem to mind all of the people that were standing there staring at him.

This was Bering Falls – the least interesting of the three.

After we saw Bering falls, we hiked along the lake shore of Saint Mary's lake. The weather was perfect here and you could see the turquoise color of the lake. If the sun is not out – the color of the lake actually looks much darker and much grayer.

It also appears to be peak wildflower season here in glacier.

The next waterfalls that we came to was St. Mary's falls. This was really unique because it was very loud when you were right on top of it, but right before and right after it, you could hardly hear it.

There were some small little waterfalls along the way from St. Mary's falls up to Virginia falls. 

Last time we were here, in 2014, this is about where we stopped on our way up to Virginia falls. The boys were younger and we're not quite as good at hiking as they are now.

Virginia Falls is only 0.7 miles past St. Mary's falls and we were not sure whether or not we were going to continue because we were getting close to dinner. We were really glad we did because Virginia Falls was absolutely spectacular.

As you stood there on the rocks – you could feel the mist of the waterfalls. It was quite refreshing after a hot hike.

The boys were even stoked to see a small rainbow over the falls falls after the second small drop.

When we got back to the campsite – everything that mom and I said out to eat as a pre-dinner snack was snarfed up immediately. As soon as mom sat down these bananas with peanut butter, the kids surrounded her and started chowing down. It was like animals at feeding time at the zoo.

We saw the hummingbird perched in a tree near our campsite.