Seattle Trip - Day 2 - Traveling from Cut Bank, MT to Spokane, WA

We started out heading towards Glacier National Park in Montana. This is the first glimpse of the Rockies that we got. As you can see they are in the far distance and very hazy at this point.
Here the girls are standing in front of one of the historical landmarks in Montana. We were continuously seeing signs that pointed to historical markers. We finally decided to stop at the Blackfeet Nation marker. Not only are they known for being brave, but they were also extremely influential in creating and implementing the current American Indian Sign Language that is used today.
Here's a picture of Jessica & her friend Melanie in front of Rockies. As you can tell we are still a bit of a ways away, but thought since we stopped for the historical sign we might as well pivot and take another picture.
Montana is known for their wildlife. They have numerous birds, mountain lions, grizzly bears, black bears, goats, and the list goes on and on. However we didn't really see any of those, but we sure did see a heck of a lot of cattle.
Oh and we got really lucky and saw some wild horses. That was pretty cool!!!
And here we are getting even closer to the mountains....
And closer....
And closer yet...
And here we are on our first hiking trail, actually in the mountains. This one was a pretty easy trail we took the route that was .6 miles one way. So only 1.2 miles total.
Here's another one of the girls on the same trail..
It may have been a short trail, but the end point was fabulous. We ended up out in the middle of the lake on a large rock formation. Here's a few shots...

All of the rock pretty much looked like this here. The sedimentary rock which make up a majority of the mountains here in glacier have such a fascinating array of color and textures.
Still more pictures from the first hike...
See, I told you we were on a rock in the middle of the lake. :-)The views were simply breathtaking. The photos do not do them justice.


For our second hike we decided to be a bit more adventurous. This next hike we decided to go to St. Mary's falls. This one was 1.2 miles one way. Let's just say the 2.4 miles were more of a push than the first one. There was more of a change in elevation, plus it was twice as long. And the waterfall was definitely worth it.

Yes the little blue and pink dot up on the cliff are Jessi & Melanie. To show hi up they are I had to go to the entirely other side of the river.
Just a random creek in the woods.
We were on going to the sun road and it pretty much is like driving on the side of the mountain.
It was weird to realize that we were at cloud level. I think the girls really got a kick out of this.
There were beautiful flowers everywhere on the sides of the road. However, it is not the easiest road to take pictures on since you need to really pay attention to where you are going.
Here's our impromptu science experiment. What happens to an unopened bag of chips when you make a somewhat dramatic increase in altitude? You guessed it... the bag puffs up like a helium balloon.
Just some random shots from the car as we drove on the Going to the Sun highway. Sorry for the blur



See the divide between the healthy trees and the ones that had been through a forest fire? Kind of crazy. Most of those same trees looked that way three years ago when Erik and I made the trip. I'm curious how it will look in another three?!?!
After a day of hiking and driving we stopped for a cold one.

We had to stop in Idaho, just to say we did. Here are the girls outside the visitor center in some french sounding town in Idaho.
And we finished of the day with some BBQ at the Longhorn.
After the first picture Jessi realized that the bear had babies.And of course she had to be a cheeseball like her mom. :-)

Seattle Trip - Day 1 - Traveling From Grand Forks to Cut Bank, MT

Good Morning Girls! They look just so bright-eyed and bushy-tailed this morning. This was around 5:30 am. I'm kind of curious how long they'll be awake in the car? Hmmm....

We finally made it onto the road around 6:30. Yup we were running a bit late, but not too bad. I can't believe they are still awake and smiling?!?!

We drove straight through with no stops from Grand Forks to Williston. Over 330 miles in the car is quite a ride. We decided to take a break from the car and had lunch at Gramma Sharons. The food was pretty good. Here they are posing with the bubble gum machine.

And they each decided to have a piece of pie. I'm guessing it was good, cuz it sure didn't last very long.

Really not sure what happened here?!?! Jessi just started laughing hysterically. I'm guessing it was from being a bit tired.
Here's some of the scenery from the drive across ND & MT.

There were a lot of abandoned farmhouses like this one.

And a lot of rolling prairies.

Not really sure when, why or by whom this church was built. The adobe style church seemed a bit out of place on the prairie.

And joy of all joy, there was some road construction to keep us awake.

I figured one of them would pass-out from shear exhaustion. By this point we were in the car for around 8 hours.

We have a picture.... It's an awesome picture... but it is also super embarrassing.. therefore we unfortunately will not be posting it here.

Some more scenery.... We saw trains nearly constantly throughout Montana. These double-decker ones are quite neat.

Just outside of Cut Bank, MT we came across a wind farm. These blade are actually LM blades that were made in Grand Forks. It's pretty neat to see them in action.


We ended the day by stopping at the Cut Bank Cafe. The burgers were D-lish. We decided to take a few pictures of Jessi & Melanie at the cafe. Being day one with a lot of driving the trip has been pretty uneventful so far. So you just have to take the pictures wherever you can. :-)

Shocking how Jessi is being a goof-ball...


Here they are sitting at the counter. It had that old style malt shop kind of feel with the smell of Erik's Grandma's house. Kind of a weird combination, but again those burgers sure were good.


Saw this mural on the side of the wall after we left the cafe. We figured it was the best photo opportunity of the day so there was no way we were going to pass it by without giving the girls the opportunity to be cheesy.
Well that wraps up day one. Nothing too exciting happened. Tomorrow night we should have some pitures of mountians. :-)

Gaspe, Quebec - Day 2

Gaspe is a small fishing village of approximately 15,000 people, which is nestled up in the mountains. It is located north of Nova Scotia. I think they are in the wrong time zone. The sun begins to rise around 3:30, so I'm pretty sure they need to switch that because it is a bit of a bugger.

Here are a few shots of the view from my hotel room.

As you probably know, I work at LM Glasfiber in a rinky dinky cubicle back in Grand Forks. But when I traveled here to Gaspe, I was put up in a pretty awesome office with a view. I guess it pays to be the visitor. Check it out!

Here's just a few shots from around. This first one is the fish market, they have everything seafood related that you can imagine. And it is all brought in daily. YUMMY!!!

I probably don't need to state the obvious, but this is one of the marinas here.

Another fine establishment for lunch. Again it was very tasty. They salad came with a strawberry dressing and was fabulous. It made me think of summer, even if the weather outside doesn't.

And to end the day, I had to go for the chocolate mousse cake. This would be the perfect dessert for my sister Kim, the chocoholic.

Gaspe, Quebec (Canada) - Day 1

Well when you go this deep into Canada they throw you on a prop plane. Might have been good information to know in advance. Let's just say the ride was a bit bumpy.

The room is quite a bit different than what the website showed. Hmmm.... Maybe I got the wrong hotel?!?!

According to the website it looks a lot more like this. Maybe the O' Canadians haven't heard of false advertising. What do you think?

However, since Gaspe is right off the coast. The seafood is fresh and amazing!!!!