Montana or Bust!!!

We went to Great Falls during the first week in August to visit Josh's Grandparents. It's a 5 1/2 hour drive to get there from Salmon, plus we hit some major road construction on the way which lengthened our driving time by an extra hour. Needless to say, we were all extremely happy to get out of the car once we arrived at our destination: Grandma and Grandpa Parsons' house!

We spent most of the afternoon there. The last time we visited their house was 10 years ago, when Ammon was just a baby. So on this trip, the younger boys met Great-Grandpa for the first time! We are so blessed to know our grandparents, and have the opportunity for our children to get to know their great-grandparents. We visited for a few hours: Josh talked with Grandpa, I talked with Grandma, and the boys played with their dog Hazel in the house and in the yard.

Then Grandma and Grandpa treated us to a super yummy buffet-style dinner at the Golden Corral. (We all love buffet dinners, but never have the opportunity to eat at buffet restaurants--the closest thing to it for us is going to a Ward Party!)

After filling up our tummies with everything our appetites desired and more, Josh and I took the boys back to the lovely hotel we stayed at and enjoyed swimming and watching TV and relaxing together.

The next morning, we ate a big continental breakfast (another buffet-style meal and a good one, too!), we said goodbye to Grandma and Grandpa and Hazel the dog, and we headed for Helena. We did almost all of the boys' school shopping there. (Montana does not have sales tax, so we love spending our money in that state.) We got good deals at Target and Ross and WalMart! Oh, and surprisingly enough, we all loved eating our cheap lunch at Taco Bell, too (another restaurant we never go to)!

Our final Montana destination was the Lewis and Clark Caverns. It is a state park located between Butte and Bozeman. Neither Josh nor I had ever been there, but it turned out to be the perfect ending to our family vacation. After we arrived, the boys liked looking around at the visitor's center displays while we waited for our tour time to start:

In order to get to the caverns, you have to hike across a mountain on a mile-long trail. The views were incredible along the hike. I paused several times just to take in the scenery surrounding me (as well as take a break to catch my breath!!).

This was by far the coolest cave experience of my adult life. Once inside the caves, there are 600 descending steps throughout the tour, as well as a built-in slide where you have to sit and scoot down to manuever around some of the formations: The formations inside were incredible!!! And every connecting cave just seemed to have bigger and better stalactites and stalagmites, towers and cave popcorn! I was in complete awe during the 1 1/2 hour duration of the tour. Oh, and we even witnessed a bat!!!

The last room had more color because the lights in that room are LED rather than fluorescent lighting, which is what's used in the rest of the caves. Because limestone reflects light, the colors in the last room contained more purples and reds and browns. Simply gorgeous!!!
In order to exit the caverns, you have to walk through a 500 foot-long hand-made tunnel. It was SOOOO cool (figuratively and literally)! I would highly recommend going to these caves if you have the chance, it is well worth the trip and the cost! I'm so glad we did!

The short 2-day vacation to Montana was our best vacation this summer. It was the perfect mix of quality family time, relaxation, and adventure: visiting with Grandma and Grandpa, eating a delicious dinner with them, hanging out at the nice hotel, getting the school shopping accomplished, and going cave exploring as a family. It was just what we needed to rejuvenate ourselves after the long and hard summer we'd had up to that point. I'm SO thankful that we went!