Yes, the title does say 'north' instead of 'fourth'. And, yes, I do think I am pretty clever. Actually this post is quite late. Reality is, I am playing catch up from all our our summer adventures. I will pick up with our trip to North Idaho and Montana in July. Kevin stopped to act like a tourist and get a picture of the girls.
We went camping in Montana for a week. Yes, that's right, seven days of sheer blisswith no cell phone service totally chillaxing. While in Montana, Kendall did her first big hike. She hiked back into Holland Falls. It is a good trek, but she was totally up for it.
Once at the Falls, Uncle Roy insisted she give the customary victory pose.
Again, the victory pose with a view of Holland Lake behind her.
The parents, a bit more subdued, but equally victorious.
The squirrels were super tame and ready to play. If you are wondering whether this is really a chipmunk or squirrel, I did a bit of research and do believe it is legitimately a squirrel. It's stripes do not continue over it's head.
The girl's did a ton of fishing, kayaking and hiking with their cousin's. Kendall was unstoppable this year in her attempt to hang with the big kids. Uncle Roy had to insist that she come up to camp one night when she was soaked head to toe and shivering!
The men also did their fair share of playing. They hiked back into Glacier Lake for a day of fishing.
Cassie was happy to join them, just like a gazelle showing them how it is done.
Kevin took us Huckleberry picking. We struck Huckleberry gold with some of the patches we found. Shhh....I will never tell the location.
Most of all we did a ton of relaxing and visiting.
Then it was off to North Idaho for some fun. My sister treated all of us to a gondola ride up Silver Mountain and lunch at the top. Fun fact: this is the longest gondola in North America (6.2 miles round trip). My mom was freaking out a little bit.
The view was amazing!
The girl's and I having a little fun at the bottom of the mountain.
The men went fishing up at Priest Lake one day, so we decided to head over to Silverwood. Kendall and Sidney got to drive the old cars. The cars really do drive.
I explained to Sidney that she was physically unable to drive the car off the track. She was not buying it until I demonstrated my reckless driving to prove the point. After that, she was a driving machine. She is lucky that my antics did not get us kicked off the ride.
Kendall has decided to stick with the kiddo rides after her California rollercoaster adventures.
My Dad, the brave soul that he is, agreed to take my sister and I on a golf date. Neither one of us are fabulous golfers by any stretch of the imagination. We were fortunate to have nobody behind us, so we were able to take our time.
Kevin caught his first Mackinaw in the deep waters of Priest Lake.
Oh and Chili decided to go on an adventure while we were visiting my parent's. One day at about 3pm, he took off out of their house and would not return. They have some heavily wooded areas around their house (think predators) and a super busy highway (think road kill). Needless to say, we were all freaking out and went on a Chili hunt. We had people on bikes, on foot and my sister and I on four wheelers (can you say danger to that one). We searched until after dark. We did have two Chili sighting which convinced Kevin that it was all a big game for the little Chiweenie. The search was called off at about 10pm. I thought certainly Chili was not going to be returning.
At about 2am that morning, Kendall came and woke me up. She was worried about Chili and could not sleep. I went to lay down with her. I was not able to fall back to sleep which turned out to be a good thing. At about 3am, I heard a faint scratch at my parent's front door. I tiptoed downstairs and wrestled with whether I should open the door or not. Every teenage horror movie ran through my head. After a brief deliberation with myself, I decided to open it. Chili came darting through the house at mach speeds. Gah! We were just very thankful that he found his way home.
