The Family Trip

The Family and I went on a long road trip recently to the beautiful state of Montana and what a great trip it was. We got to meet some very interesting people and see some very exotic locations. We had 4 weeks to roam around and do what we thought was reasonable with two kids. Our little Honda Civic got to see just about all of Montana, 3550 miles in total, at what appears to be peak gasoline prices ($4.22 a gallon), thank god the thing averaged 38 miles to the gallon. However, still cheaper to drive than fly the entire family and rent a car.

So lets start at the beginning, June 30th we set sail for all points north til Lewistown, Montana. From the OC we hit the Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas for a couple of hours. Grace and I aren't that into gambling so we took the kids to the "Shark Reef" aquarium at Mandalay Bay. What an awesome aquarium! They have about 30 sharks, 50 stingrays and a plethora of other sea and fish life. While we were there they had an exhibit that let you touch a stingrays and horseshoe crabs (scientists believe they haven't evolved in millions of years, they look akin to the trilobite), they somewhat remind me of a monster from Star Trek. Anywho, Mehley loved watching the stingrays, mind you not touching them, she was pretty freaked out by the idea and forced me to touch them in her place. Stingrays are very soft, almost like velvet soft, I actually didn't touch the horseshoe crabs, they are a little too weird for me. From there we went for lunch then took off for the road... for Utah.

We stayed in a town called Toquerville, Utah (the entire time i had the song "one to toke over the line" by Brewer & Shipley" only replace "toke" with "Toquerville", drove me nuts). Normally, a stay in a town like Toquerville would be mundane and otherwise boring. However, this town actually rests about 30 miles west from the mouth of Zion National park, so the next day the we took the fam to Sinawava in Zion. We spent about 6 hours at Zion", loosely translated means, sacred temple or utopia and/or heaven and it is pretty heavenly. Because we had the kids and lord knows we don't want to lose any of them, we decided to do the less aggressive hike and saw "the temple". Very cool, it's always very humbling when you see and experience something that large, sheer walls of 1 to 2 thousand feet with a happy little river running through it. We didn't do "Angel's Landing" which, from what we're told, is a precipice along one of the canyon walls that takes you to an amazing cave, the thing is you're like 1500 feet up and have two massive drop offs to your left and right. So, we snapped a few pictures and had some lunch in a nice little town called Springdale. From there it's off to "The Temple", Salt Lake City is famous for one thing and that's the Mormon church. We stopped by and got to see the temple exterior and see the new(er) tabernacle, all pretty cool. The Temple was pretty amazing, apparently it is built with 6 ft thick pieces of marble, how in gods name did they do that 100 years ago, the mind boggles. BTW, I had no idea that there was an Illinois connection to the Mormon faith, one of the founders reached martyrdom in a southern Illinois town, so there you have it. Off to Idaho.

Hi... we're in Idaho.

Actually, the only thing funny that happened in Idaho was when I was checking in. I asked the clerk what there was to do while in Idaho, his reponse, totally straight faced "Fishing and hunting...you know everything". I thought that was funny enough to share.

So from Pocatello,Idaho we woke up and it was time to continue our trip, next stop, Yellowstone. What an amazing place, you can see why they decided to save this landmass and create a national park out of it. We saw foxes, buffalo, deer, elk and some fish. I wish we had more time to spend there cause it's hard to take it all in within 5 hours. Our wish was to see old faithful (which by the by is experiencing some infidelity, he isn't as faithful as he used to be). We arrived at the viewing station for Old Faithful and started to see some unease around the base of the geyser, which means it's about to erupt. 10 minutes later, BANG, a national monument does it's thing. Strike that off the bucket list.

5 hours later we're on the road again headed for Lewistown. I had no idea what to expect. It's a pretty little town looking for some TLC. I was quite taken aback by how beautiful the place was, it's a modest town but it's got everything you need, up to and including broadband and waterslides. There, we stayed with Grace's mother Deb and Lanny for two weeks. We live in Southern California and it's famous for it's sunny weather, which is absolutely the case, well, it rained for a fortnight except for two days while we were in Lewistown. We meet our rainy weather quota for the year.

While we were there deb had some work around that house that needed done. Me being the handyman of the family(that's a joke if you didn't know), decided to take on some of the work. We leveled out some of the landscape in front of the house for a rock wall, then did some "American clay" on the inside of the house. My first time with a trowel and I think i did pretty well.

Deb had planned a nice little camping trip to Fort Peck, which also has a dam by the same name. The dam is the largest earthen dam on earth. It was constructed during the "new deal" area and once employed 50k men. Now, the area contains a beautiful parcel of land on which to camp, thanks in part to the Army corps. of engineers. We camped under the stars and had some amazing vegan potato salad thanks in part to Deb. Mehley, loves to go camping, which is something we plan to do more of when we get back to SoCal. So, while we were there, it was the beginning of the fort peck theater season. We had the opportunity to see a play called "the Seussical" which was just splendid. It was a mish-mash of all the Dr. Suess books, mostly "Horton hears a who". It was amazing how engaged Mehley was during the play, she was actually concerned for one of the characters and referred to her by name (Jojo). She was really happy to have seen that. Thanks Deb and Lanny.

Fort Peck also houses a great museum about the inhabitants of the area both past and present. I learned while out there that Montana is the only place in the world that the mighty extinct T-Rex is/was found. The museum also has plenty of activities that go on during all hours of the day, Mehley built a little bird house during a little class. It was fun, i heard. While Mehley was doing that, Lanny and I took the tour of the dam. That was an amazing feat of human engineering. I guess it was built to regulate the navigation and flow of the Missouri river, as a side benefit it also generates electricity. It sounds as if the last seven years of drought in Montana has depleted much of the water and it's near 50 feet of not having enough water to produce electricity, it still has plenty of water but it needs to be a certain height for gravity to push those big turbines.

After camping, we went to the Phillips County Museum in Malta, Montana. They actually have on display the world's most complete set of dinosaur bones. I forget the variety of dino it was butI think it was a vegi-suarous. They also have info on native american's and the west's lifestyle and famous citizens. The museum has too much info to read, it's needs like it's own book for all the stuff written in there.

From there we went back to Lewistown. Mehley was introduced to her first waterslide, I think we actually did the slides about 50 times before she tired of it. They had these friction free pads that helped with going really, really fast, the waterslide in Columbia Falls Near Glacier park can benefit from these pads, cause otherwise you go slow down them. Mehley really did enjoy herself on the waterslides. I'll post a video later.

Alright, so two weeks and 6 inches of rain later, no joke, we head for our next destination, Kalispell. There we visit Jebb and Shanti. We eat dinner and have some drinks we are a little late though because we stopped in Browning to visit with Sherri and Woody. Sherri is Angie's mom and lives on the Blackfeet reservation with her now husband Woody Kipp, whom wrote a book about his experiences in life and at war. We stopped at East Glacier at the Glacier lodge. The lodge is absolute amazing, it has these 12 foot in diameter red wood tree posts all along the lobby. Absolutely amazing. The view from the back of the hotel also hosts one of the most spectacular vistas I've seen. I believe you can actually see one of the mountain faces of glacier park from the back of the lodge. Woody was telling me a story of one of the peaks, something about a bear and it's cubs. Speaking of bears and cubs, Jebb was telling us a story about being hit by a bear and surviving to tell the tale (ask him for the details).

For the next three nights we stayed in Kila which is just south of Kalispell. We stayed at Tammy and Jeff's farm called "Full Circle Farm". If you're ever in the Flathead valley I would totally recommend staying there, it's much cheaper than most hotels and offers amenities that can't be beat, such as a Full house with working kitchen and you're in nature, they have some 300 acres of wooded area. Grace grew up just up the road from there and knew Tammy and Jeff from way back. Thursday night we had dinner with Tammy and Jeff and I can't say enough how nice they are. We had a great dinner, Jeff and I ended up talking shop about what he does and what I do. Very cool.

Friday, we took the kids to the Glacier Maze...

we'll continue the entry later. sorry for being so long....