Our trip to Glacier National Park {We can just say "Wow God, You are amazing!"}

 Yesterday we arrived home after spending a week at Glacier National Park in Montana. It was a wonderful trip and an absolutely beautiful place! We live in a beautiful place here in Minnesota and so I am used to thanking and praising God for his amazing creative powers but I was incredibly in awe of Him during this trip. He is awesome!

I took 450 pictures but I won't share them all! (are you terribly disappointed? ) Here is a few odds and ends of the ones I took. I will probably share quite a few more pictures one at a time in my Sunday posts.  I have tons to do here at home (mountains of laundry, a weedy garden and a dirty van to name a few) so I will just quickly tell a few things about our trip.

 We met up with Ken's parents - Terry and Sharyl, at the park. The park was about halfway between our homes. We each had to travel nearly 1000 miles one way. We enjoyed spending time with them.

We hiked every day we were there. The first day we ate our lunch at the edge of this rushing river. 

 Then we crossed over it on a very wiggly cable/plank bridge. What fun!

 There was a mountain stream near our campsite that the kids had fun moving rocks around in, creating rapids and changing it's course.

 When in camp we had fun playing games and of course had to work on cooking. The camp cooking here was different for me as we were in bear country and so had to make sure to pack everything that had anything to do with food and put it in our vehicles as soon as we were done eating. Leaving dishes or a stove out could result in a fine.

 One rainy day we drove over the mountains on the Going-to-the-sun-road (though it didn't go to the sun that day) and visiting the cedar forest on the other side. There was a river there with all colors of beautiful rocks. The girls and I had fun making people out of the rocks. Terry and Sharyl made a cross.

Some of our rock people.

Ken and I in the Cedar Forest.

 This big cedar tree took Ken and Terry and the four kids to get around it.

Aaron on a stump or a cedar.

A beautiful river in the woods.

 Lakes and trees and mountains are such a beautiful combination and we got to see that view (with different lakes and mountains and trees) over and over again.

 Granddad with his granddaughters. Standing on a bridge made of a couple of flattened logs. On that fun hike we got to cross over a bunch of little waterfalls and a couple of rushing rivers.

 The large Saint Mary's river near our campsite.

 Cliff climbing was a great favorite of the boys. Mara after falling once (not badly) wasn't as fond of it.

There were flowers all over the park. It looked like a flower garden so many places. It was, but a natural one planted by God. I took tons of pictures of them but decided you might not want to see every variety as there were so many! 

Miniature Lupine. It was all over and beautiful!

 Hiking down the trail. On this day Ken and Terry were off climbing a mountain so just Sharyl, the kids and I went hiking. We had a bunch of fun and also found our first bear evidence- some big bear scat and a place the bear had dug for grubs. We decided to turn around and go back.

 Another gorgeous falls. This was just down from Sunrift gorge- one of my favorite areas of the park that I saw.

 One morning we went to an Art class at the park. Here Megan is adding her touch to a painting. We also did our own watercolor paintings.

 Checking out Many Falls. This was the area we finally saw a bear but were thankful that it was on the other side of the lake. (so I didn't get any pictures).

 Our final stop before heading home. We drove down to the Two Medicine Lake area.

Now I had better go get busy!!! Have you ever gone to Glacier National Park? What is your favorite sort of family vacation?