Family Vacay Day 1

Our big family vacation for the summer was the last week of July. I had been preparing for this trip since summer began, and we were so glad when it was finally time to go!

 

Every summer we go as a family to visit one of our grandparents. Josh and I both have one grandma and one grandpa still alive that we rotate between visiting. We feel that it's important that our children have the opportunity to know their great-grandparents, so we came up with this system of summer vacation visits. This summer, it was time for us to go see my Grandpa Perkins in Spokane. Whenever we go visit one of the grandparents, we also choose an additional activity to do together since it's usually the only family vacation we take each summer. Josh and I had both wanted to go to Glacier National Park for years, since neither one of us had ever been there, so we chose that as as the accompanying fun part of this vacation.

 

Our vacation lasted 4 days. Each day, we averaged about 6 hours of driving. It was long, but the kids did fairly well. We don't have a DVD player in the van, so I had planned and prepared several activities for them to do in the car. I got clipboards for each child, and printed and made several paper games for them to do. Since we were driving such great distances in such a short time, I wanted to make sure the kids knew where we were at & where we were going, so I made copies of a map that showed the area of our travels in north Idaho, east Washington, and west Montana and put that in their clipboard packet along with the itinerary of what our daily destinations were. They highlighted the roads on the map whenever we passed a major city, so they could always tell where we were and what city was coming next. In their clipboard packet, they also had several car bingo games, a highway road signs game, dot-to-dot & tic-tac-toe games, and the state license plate game. They used pens and highlighters to mark their paper games with. They each also packed one little box they could bring in the car, and they were filled with their Nintendo DS's & games, little card games, and books.

Our vacation began on Sunday, July 22. We left Salmon late in the morning, after Josh was done working. We drove 3 hours to Missoula, and stopped for lunch. We met up with my sisters Tawna and Tabbi, who were heading back to Utah from visiting Grandpa P., at a restaurant in Missoula. We visited with them for about a half hour after eating before going our separate ways.

In order to make our family vacation affordable, we had to minimize costs wherever possible. We saved at least $200 by staying in very cheap hotels and the kids slept in sleeping bags on the floor, and by bringing our own food with us for the entire trip instead of going to restaurants. Our 2 hotels totalled $165 and the groceries cost $125. Just that one meal at Dairy Queen in Missoula was $30! By planning meals and packing sleeping bags, we could afford to do fun & quality activities together during the day, which I felt was more important to spend our money on. I packed a lot of snack food for the drives, and prepared trail mix in gallon-sized bags for each boy that they could snack on at specific times during each day's drive. They had requested items to be placed in their trail mix, and the bags were full of pretzels, marshmallows, cheese nips, M&Ms, sunflower seeds, dry cereal, and raisins.

After our stop in Missoula, we drove about 1 1/2 hours to Kellogg, and stopped again at Silver Mountain Resort. They have the world's Longest Gondola, and I'd wanted to ride it for years! Whenever I drove from Salmon to Spokane, I saw it and thought about it, but it wasn't until this trip that I finally made that wish become a reality! For each day of our vacation, I planned for us to do one major activity, and riding the Gondola was a good way for us to break up the drive on Sunday!

It's 3.1 miles long, and it goes across a main street in town, up a hill, down across a suburb, and climbs all the way to the top of the mountain. It was a spectacular ride! We loved the views! 

In the summertime, at the top of the peak where the Gondola ends, there's a children's playground & bounce house set up. There's also biking trails and a disc golf course at the top. As Josh and I wandered around, the boys happily played because they were free from sitting in the car!

It was such a gorgeous day! I truly enjoyed the peaceful atmosphere up there!!! I layed on the grass for a while, just soaking in the beauty of my surroundings. It was the perfect stop!

Riding the gondola back down seemed to go faster than the ride up. After we arrived back at the base of it, the boys played with an outdoor bean bag toss that was set-up on the sidewalk. I love how they delight in the simplest of activities! (Notice Josh doing the "woot-woot" in this photo because he tossed the beanbag in the hole?!!)

We got back in the car, and drove the last leg of the 1st day to our destination city, Spokane. We spent the evening at Grandpa's house, looking at photo albums, listening to his stories, and playing around the house. My boys especially love the man-cave room downstairs with antlers and stuffed animals all over the place!

The boys also liked this golf-tee game that was in the upstairs living room coffee table:

Josh was happy to get a break from driving, and before dinner he took a little snoozer in Grandma's blue chair:

We had a wonderful time visiting Grandpa! We love hearing his stories of growing up on a farm, and flying planes in WWII, and travels & experiences he's had with Grandma. He's 95 and lives alone, and still takes great care of himself and his home. He has a great sense of humor, and makes me laugh! He amazes me with all that he's accomplished in his lifetime! I sure love him!

We spent that first night of our trip at Grandpa's house. Josh and I stayed in the spare room downstairs, Ammon & Kanyon slept in the man-cave room in their sleeping bags, and Jonah & Micah slept in their sleeping bags in the open area of the downstairs hall. The first day of our family vacation been a long, but good, one and we were all tired and ready for bed!