Pack it up, we're headed to Canada. Merril had a race that needed radios by Glacier National Park. We tagged along for a summer vacay.
We stopped along the way in Idaho at Lava Hot Springs.
It was pretty hot outside and the hot springs were also very hot!
Mark is wearing Dad's watch because he's trying to see his heart rate.
The next day we were up by Glacier. It was much colder there. Merril set up the radios early and we went to check on them with him.
We went back to the expo where they give out registrations and runners can purchase merch. They had a s'mores station and hammocks. We stopped there for a bit.
Then we went for a hike in Glacier National Park. Mikayla was cold and had to wear the SAR coat of shame. Lol.
But we found a cool waterfall. And there was a deer on the trail. It was not scared of us. It knows it was in a national park.
After we were done at Glacier, we drove to the Cardston Alberta Temple just inside of Canada. It's pretty old. It was complete in 1923 about 100 years ago.
Then we drove to Alberta and stayed in a college dorm that they rent out to tourists during the summer. We found a nice ward for Sunday.
We went to Banff National Park next. In the town of Banff, we got pizza and ice cream. Mikayla loved the pizza in Banff. They brought out honey and chili oil to eat with the pizza crust. Never had that before but it was yummy!
Then we drove to Lake Louise in the park. The lake is glacier run off and is a beautiful blue green color.
There's also a very fancy hotel.
We hiked up to a viewpoint and it really shows off the beautiful lake.
We drove for a while and stayed another night. Got up the next day and hit another hot spring. This one wasn't developed and was right next to a river. So it was more of a natural hot spring.
This one smelled a tiny bit of sulfur but was really pretty.
Then we drove a bunch more across Idaho and ate dinner at a restaurant that is owned by the guy that used to own the Painted Pony here in town. It was super yummy.
We kept driving but it was getting late. We'd been in the car all day and Merril just wanted to keep driving to home. We switched drivers and it was nearly 10 p.m. I was looking up hotels in Idaho Falls because I was kind of done. That's when we hit an antelope. Boo. It smashed the passenger front pretty bad and we were losing coolant. We also lost our freon for the air conditioning system, which is such a bummer because we just replaced the leaking condenser right before the trip.
We had enough coolant to get to Idaho Falls. We checked into a hotel and hit the hay. Merril got up early the next morning to fix the car enough to get us home. Unfortunately, he couldn't do anything about the air conditioning. We ended up driving home from Idaho Falls in the summer with no air conditioning. We kept putting water on towels to keep us cool but we had to keep the windows down a bit to keep air moving. We got home fine but it was a bummer end to the trip.
