Waterton National Park

After we got done with our backpacking we headed across the boarder into Waterton Canada. We were planning on spending a few hours seeing, then driving back and staying on the U.S. side in Glacier.

Kevin Ended up getting super sick as we were driving across the boarder. I've never seen anyone so sick. He threw up about a million times even though we hadn't really eaten anything all day to throw up. He looked miserable. Every time he would get back in the car he would throw up because of the smells and the motion. We pulled over a lot.

He asked if we could stay at a hotel that night instead of camping, he couldn't make it back to the U.S. that night. Sean and I ran around and found a hotel, and Kevin was able to head up to bed.

Sean and I were starving. We walked around the cool little town and got a super weird but extremely good pizza. We were laughing way hard the entire night but felt super bad because Kevin was so miserable. We felt bad having a ton of fun while he was dying.

Luckily the next morning he felt weak but a million times better. The road trip was back on.

We woke up the next morning feeling refreshed having showered, ate, and slept. We decided to take it easy and have some fun in Waterton so we rented a Surrey for the three of us. We road around the little town and realized that there really wasn't much to see on a Surrey. Yet we did find Cameron Falls, as shown above; I can't miss out on my families own waterfall. We saw a beautiful view of the lakes, and most importantly we went extreme Surreying by going down a little but super steep hill.

We also saw lots of wild life the town, hanging out next to restaurants and people. It's completely normal to have pets like this.

We finally headed out of Waterton back into Glacier. Our plan was now to head over to Washington. In order to do this we had to drive through the main part of Glacier along the Going-to-the-Sun Road. This is one of the most spectacular scenery's I've seen anywhere, and you don't have to leave your car. Its crazy.

The boys were amazed by the Sunrift Gorge, and wondered why anyone would backpack when there are sights like this ten feet from the main road. I still enjoyed the backpacking, but this gorge is pretty cool and it takes little effort to get to.

This is the Going-to-the-Sun Road and it really is amazing. I like our backpacking portion better because we were so secluded, but I still love that I was able to see this valley.

Afterwords we kept driving through Glacier and we ended up spending a night in Sandpoint Idaho. It was just a little town in northern Idaho surrounded by lakes and huge rivers. It was a nice relaxing morning that we could sit out in the sun for a bit on the docks.

Next we drove to Spokane, Washington where  none of us new of anything to do there. Sean and I were on activity control while Kevin was driving. Sean's find was a success. Mine was ridiculous.

Sean picked out a Zoological Park called Cat Tales that was really cool. We were able to see tigers and lions among other great animals. I would recommend it. We ended up seeing so much great wildlife and animals this trip. 

I loved the white tigers eyes, but mostly I loved Mufasa and his really long dreads in his hair. Sean has a video of all three of us trying to get the Lion to stand up. We are yelling, making baby noises, and rapping and we didn't know it was recording.

My awesome pick was a gondola that I didn't research enough on. When you picture a gondola you assume it goes up a mountain to some sort of cool overlook... not this gondola.

It was a gondola that takes you about 100 yards across a parking lot and buildings, across a little river that has plenty of regular lookout points, and then back across the parking lot. All in 25 minutes, you stop every 30 ft. for about 5 minutes each. Its about 100 degrees inside the gondola and I was getting super light headed and sick riding inside.

This wasn't one of my better ideas.

What was one of my better ideas was stopping and staying with my great uncle Donnie. He is one of the most entertaining and eccentric people that I know. We got to his house late at night and he showed us his large car collection, his photos, and then all the places we could choose to sleep. We way tired by then and excited to sleep, especially on a real bed.

When we woke up he entertained us more with his views on life while we made a nice wholesome breakfast of BLT's and homemade carrot juice.

He is a great man, and hilarious to be around. I'm glad Kevin and Sean made it through our visit. I thought it was a fun stop and he was nice and sent us off with all the super-foods we would need to continue our trip in top health.

To be continued...

Glacier National Park

Towards the end of the summer I took a nice long road trip to the National Parks of the Northwest U.S. I was planning on going a week with friends, then meeting up with my family for a week. My family backed out and so did most friends. Kevin and I decided we would go anyways and someone would be able to come, then the morning we were leaving Sean decided to come with us. 

So... the Tucker boys and I headed out on a few week road trip, with little idea of where we were going. We filled my poor escape to the brim with camping, climbing, backpacking, and any other kind of gear we could think of.

Our first, and maybe my favorite stop of the trip was Glacier National Park. I think Glacier is the most under-rated state park in the U.S. It is absolutely amazing. I would go back in a second. We only spent a few days in Glacier, but I could have spent much longer.

We started the day off really slowly. We woke up early to leave the morning after I got back from NYC. Kevin and Sean drove up from Provo to get me, and by then it was lunch time so we had to stop at The Pie Pizzeria and get cheese pull-a-parts, by this time it was about 2:00 in the afternoon. 

Since we had a late start we decided to drive straight to Glacier National Park, and forgo all the little stops we had thought of on the way. The highlight was of the drive was seeing the HUGE Jesus on the mountain in my dad's home town of Butte, Montana. 

Montana is one of my favorite states, everything is so green and beautiful, and the weather was perfect.

We ended up driving 10-12 hours to the North part of Glacier, pulling over onto a creepy little turn-off, throwing out a tarp and falling straight asleep.

We woke up early the next morning and got a permit so that we could go on a little backpacking adventure through a more secluded part of the park that Kevin had been too.

We picked a campsite that was next to a lake which was about a 10 mile hike. We thought that was all we could make in a day, so we decided to hike in and out the same way because otherwise we would be hiking about 27 miles in two days.

We ended up hiking about 16-18 miles the first day anyways. We hiked 10 miles in with our packs, still felt pretty good, then sat them down and hiked 3-4 miles further up the trail. We never quite hit our destination because it began to get dark, so we hiked the 3-4 miles back to our campsite to spend the night.

The hike in was beautiful. It's amazing how many lines of sight you can follow in a short amount of time, we passed through so many different scenery's and terrains in the first ten miles.

Sean broke his glasses towards the beginning of the hike.

The fields and flower's were amazing on this hike. Very dreamy.

We took one little rest stop at about 6 miles, we were pretty excited to just get to our destination.

I felt like I was in the movie Into the Wild, other than I had two very funny and entertaining boys instead of my own solitude. The rivers that we would pass looked just like the ones in the movie. That movie is one of my favorites, and I've always wished I had it in me to do something like he did, other than not die.

There were several lakes up where we were camping, all of which were huge and amazing. It felt very surreal.

The flowers that we would pass on the trail were really pretty, and way big. It's hard to tell how large these are, but they are bigger than my hand.

All of our photos are kind of funny because we took them with the timer. We never seem to look very collected in them. Mostly I never am. Sean and Kevin were usually just being funny, and doing something weird.

I like this photo of Sean. It show's how relaxing and serene this place was.

The last mile of the day, I didn't think I was going to make it. I've never had such bad legs ache's, and I'm pretty weird and get them all the time. My legs killed. I couldn't walk. I also was wearing hiking shoes that I decided I hate. My feet hurt. It had never felt so good to lay down. I had to apply a ton of pressure to my legs and take some medicine.

Once the medicine kicked in I was so relaxed and tired. We ended up eating some tuna and horchata, we weren't hungry all day, but new we needed energy. Then pretty much went straight to sleep. It was an amazingly deep sleep for backpacking.

The next morning we woke up and hung out for a little bit around camp, then ate the worst thing we could of for breakfast, Top Ramon. We didn't pack much food because we figured it was two days and it wasn't worth carrying more weight. Top Ramon in the morning is awful, and I had to force myself to eat it. Bad idea.

Then we hiked out 10 miles out. Since my feet were hurting so bad, I decided to wear some great Old Navy flip flops all ten miles. Some how that was way better than my shoes, although the few people we passed on the trail did tell me I was crazy. Everyone looked super hard core with their boots and walking sticks, then there was us with a little packs, flip flops, and whistle's instead of bear mace.

We saw BEARS! Well Kevin and I saw a bear. Sean saw a bear and it's cubs. It was so cool. It was about 20 yards up the mountain from us, just staring at us. When your see a bear with cubs you are supposed to not look at it or let it see you, and slowly back away. We looked straight at it, then went crap when it looked at us, and tried to slowly move on, but were transfixed. Bad idea. But it was so cool, and so close to us. Seeing a bear that close 10 miles from the nearest road was a little intense.

We also saw a huge moose, and some dear and other wild life. It was quite the hike.

Aren't these two great looking boys. They were so much fun to go with, and making me laugh the entire trip. Most of the jokes were directed at me, but sadly I still couldn't help laughing.

As much as I loved the entire hike, it felt extremely good when we finally made it back to the car after a few day's in the wilderness.