Our Trip to Big Sky Country

Last week we took a drive up north.  WAY up north!  To Montana!  Josh's good friend, Yancy and his wife Jacquie recently bought a 10 acre cherry orchard in Montana and we longed to see it and all the sights beautiful Montana has to offer.  Driving through Idaho and Montana brought Jack's state total to 43....not too bad for a 7 year old!  And they were new states for our other boys as well.

Their property is simply stunning.  It overlooks Flathead Lake and is just full of fruit trees!  Mostly cherries, but also plums, peaches, apricots, apples, pears and walnuts.  The boys just walked around plucking fruit to eat while enjoying the beauty!  

The backyard was a great place to play baseball...

...or just sit under the weeping willow tree and eat a pear.  :-)

Or maybe watch Yancy ride his unicycle...

...or find weird looking slugs.  

And the front porch?  Well...that may have been my most favorite spot.  Each night the sunset looked a little different as it settled down on the horizon above the lake.  Beautiful!  

Josh and Yancy have been friends for about 12 years...and our paths have crossed many times and all over the world!  Here is a picture of Yancy with Jack in Qatar in 2010...

...and with Joe in 2016!  He's kind of like a fun adopted uncle for our boys!  :-)  (He even tried to get them to go "snipe hunting" with him in the backyard....silly Yancy.)

I think the boys' favorite part of the whole trip was swimming in Flathead Lake each afternoon.  They probably would have been happy spending all day every day there!  On our first day, there were quite a few waves and it felt more like the ocean than a lake!  Which was perfect....since Toby has been asking to go to the beach for a LONG time!  This satisfied his longing for the beach! 

Skipping rocks was a favorite activity for the big AND little boys!  

We spent quite a bit of time in the car...but it was worth it.  We drove to the National Bison Range one day and were able to see bison, mule deer, elk, pronghorn antelope and big horned sheep.  It was pretty warm, so we were fortunate to be able to see as much as we did! 

The classic action shot - now repeated by the next generation of Meyer men!  :-) 

The next day, we visited Glacier National Park.  This was a much-awaited moment. Josh got to see Glacier with his family when he was Toby's age...and he has always talked about returning.  And we are so glad we did!  

The beauty of this place is simply indescribable.  It is almost too much to take in...too beautiful!  I tried to capture some of the beauty with our camera...but it just doesn't do it justice.  

Our first stop was at Lake McDonald - maybe the clearest, smoothest body of water we have ever seen.  The rocks were all different colors and you could see them clearly through the water.  Yancy declared it to be the all-time best skipping rocks location....and he was right!  The guys got rocks to skip dozens of times almost halfway across the lake!  It was great! 

Georgie was happy to just play with the rocks!

On the drive up to Logan Pass, we stopped at various spots to take in the beauty.  

Of course Georgie - our little naturalist - not only took in the big views, but took the time to see one of the smallest creatures nearby.

The boys all found their own little toads after George did the initial find. 

It was great for Yancy and Josh to reconnect after not seeing each other for about 2 years.  

Jack found the BIGGEST pine cone we've ever seen!

The drive up to Logan Pass was amazing.

And as if the view itself wasn't enough....WE SAW A BEAR!  There was one vehicle in front of us, going up the mountain with a steep cliff to our left and a steep drop off to our right.  It slowed down and we saw that there was a black bear (cinnamon phase) walking slowly up the road.  It had no where to go, so we just followed and snapped photos for about 5 minutes until it finally found a spot to climb off the road.  Wow!  What an experience!  The one animal the boys (and we) desperately wanted to see was a bear!

The vintage tour buses that are well-known in Glacier! 

At the top of Logan Pass, we saw plenty of these cute little guys - Colombian Ground Squirrels.

Josh and Yancy took Toby, Jack and George on the hike to see the Hidden Lake.  Joe was ready for a nap and my ankle can't take much hiking, so we stayed behind to rest.  But I'm so glad they got some amazing pictures!

They got so close to an old mountain goat!  It almost looked like we were in Switzerland instead of Montana!

It was a quick trip with a LONG drive home. (We passed this rest stop and had to take a picture!)  But it was so worth every minute of it.  We know we'll be returning to Montana again one day soon and we are grateful to Yancy and Jacquie for welcoming us to their new home!