After we left the ranch we headed to Montana for the next few days of the trip. Some good friends of ours, the Laytons, have a house on lake Blaine near Kalispell that they let us use for the week. It was absolutely gorgeous and we enjoyed the drive the whole way up. We were excited to have the week to explore this part of the country we haven’t been to!
We brought our bikes on the trip so the first day we jumped on our bikes and rode around the country rides by the house. Lake Blaine is super low this year so we weren’t able to get in the water but we did love riding around it and looking out across the water. We drove out to the other small towns around the house and our favorite place to walk around was Whitefish. It’s a small ski town up in the mountains and it was fun to walk around the little streets and shops. Josh and I snuck away one evening and had dinner in Kalispell at a restaurant called Tamarack. It had such good food and it was fun to be on our own for a couple hours. What we loved the most was the view from the house - looking out to the beautiful mountains just out our window and the gorgeous open fields. Josh and I went for a walk/run every morning and just loved being outside in the country. There were lilac bushes all over and the lodge pole pines were so tall and straight and we kept our eyes open for eagles that we caught a glimpse of every once in a while.
One day I took the older kids to the Strawberry Lake trailhead to ride our bikes and explore the trails. We got most of the way up and got stopped by a fallen tree across the road. We were only about a mile and a half from the trailhead so we decided to park and just bike from there. It was a pretty steep mile and a half up and it took us some time to get there. But we did it and without too much whining even :) When we got to the trailhead a couple of guys were there and told us that the whole trail was covered with fallen trees and it was not possible to bike it. They had tried and ended up stashing their bikes and just hiking the trail. We decided not to even try it but just hung out there and played in the river for a little while to cool off. The ride back down to the car was quick and easy and even though we didn’t get to ride the trail we were glad we got to ride at all!
One day we drove over to the Hungry Horse Dam. It was super cool to see and the dam is so high the kids thought it was amazing. The reservoir behind the dam was really awesome and looked like a great reservoir to boat on. We all promised that we would come back and boat there one day!
We stopped for ice cream and lunch in the small town of Hungry Horse and Liev got out his new rocket launcher to play with. We played flies up on the grass with the rockets and had a blast just being outside on that gorgeous day.
When it was time to say goodbye to our house in Kalispell none of us wanted to leave. It was the perfect place for us to relax, explore and experience the Montana way of life. We loved every second we were there!
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