The youngest 9 kids of my mom & dad's family made it to Glacier. We congregated on Fun Lane, which was where Ryan, Dave and Megan's families had cabins all next to each other. Excuse me, Kabins. This is a KOA. I must respect the K.
This girl ruined a few of her outfits but the fun she had made up for it.
Everything was so much fun. Even watching our kids brawling on the playground was fun.
On Friday afternoon, we planned on doing a family hike to St. Mary Falls. Parking at Glacier is a nightmare, by the way. If you want to do anything fun in the park, you have to take the shuttle.
The problem with the shuttle is that only so many people fit on them, they run every half hour and finding parking to get on the shuttle can be nightmarish. But us speedy ones got on the first shuttle.
Willow bounced from seat to seat, never one to sit still.
Not too far up the road, traffic was at a standstill. The driver got on her radio and said, "Bearjam ahead." A mama grizzly was raising her cubs not too far from the road and everyone had to stop to get a picture. It's hard to see but in the center of the picture about a third of the way down is a grizzly. People come to the park all the time and never see grizzlies but we did on our first try.
This less than a mile hike is perfect for kids. Even slow ones like Henry and Hadley.
I got to stay near the back with them as my Olympic walker husband sped on ahead with the older kids and adults.
Our older kids got a little ahead of Chet and this is how he found them when he got to the falls. Be still my heart. This isn't shallow or calm water. He made them back up behind the big rocks and they weren't very happy. They weren't going to fall in, they pleaded.
I had a hard time enjoying the falls because I was too busy corralling toddlers and counting kids. All it takes is one clumsy kid to trip and they'd roll down the rock face and into the water. And I have clumsy kids.
We stayed long enough to grab a few pictures, then headed back. The next round of shuttlers arrived and they hiked to this waterfall and then continued on to Virginia Falls. If we didn't have the toddlers with us, it would have been fun to go there too. It didn't look as cliffy as this one in the pictures.
We waited around for a while for the next shuttle to come get us. It was just us and our kids as the others either went to the other falls or had fallen behind on the hike. When it arrived, it looked rather full. I went up to the door and asked the driver, "You got room for two adults and seven kids?" "We sure do!" he said, jollily.
We loaded our stinky, sweaty family onto the bus full of elderly tourists. There were three open seats. For 9 of us.
Henry, Ruby and I squished into one seat and the kind lady next to us scooted over so Henry could sit between us. A few minutes into our ride, he fell asleep on her arm. Thank you, nice lady.
To be continued...
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