national park recovery period, montana edition.

sorry again for the bloggy delay. we have been without decent internet for awhile. when i last blogged, we were in lovely grand tetons. well, when i actually blogged about the grand tetons, we were in some random spot in montana. after a week at yellowstone and a week of boondocking at grand tetons, we need a little breather to regroup, before headed to glacier national park.

our view out the front door after spending a week overlooking the tetons was less than impressive.

the sunset weren’t too bad, though. but still. not teton-esque.

we spent a lot of time deep cleaning. the camper was pretty gross. we did a lot of laundry. all the bedding. towels. and of course a lot of very grubby clothing. we all took nice, long, hot showers. everything was so fresh and so clean.

there wasn’t much to do in town or at the campground really. there was a little playground area that we hit up a couple of times. the girls love to climb and hang.

we squeezed in a bit of school. and a lot of art and crafts. anna finished up these stuffed monsters from a kit she received at christmas from my mom. (she would later give them all away to our friends from the tetons).

we also tried out a new, more advanced kit that derek got for anna. it required poking your own holes with the needle. and thread color changes. and anna got frustrated quickly. i finished it up for her and it turned out quite cute. but, we will pack it away for now and give it a try at a later date. 🙂

some hazel art for your viewing pleasure.

on one day, with the camper all cleaned up and derek working, i decided to use the rec room to do a bit of quilting. i let the kids play the ipad for the entire day, while i stitched away at a quilt i have been “working on” since we got on the road.

i made pretty good progress.

i had a pretty good set up, with plenty of space, but when the kids wanted lunch, i packed up and moved the stuff off to the side, and took them home to eat. when we returned, my table had been taken over by a group of card players, so i was relegated to this tiny little spot. oh well, i made it work.

i churned out 12 blocks. i was hoping for 20, but i’ll take what i can get these days. i’m liking it, so far.

i finally had to pack it all up, knowing that it would be awhile before i made any more progress on it. blerg.

later that evening, we headed back over to the rec room area, for an ice cream social. it was only $1 per scoop! the kids loaded up and we sat and listened to the camp hosts (owners?) talk about the area. we were the only young family there. the rest of the crowd was at least 30 years older than me. everyone was very nice, though, which is not always a guarantee when retirees run up against families with young kiddos. either way, the ice cream was good.

the next day, we got back on the road. the kids and i took the opportunity to swing through helena, to check another capitol building off of our list.

i’m not sure the kids really care at this point, but they are still willing to unload and let me take a photo.

we drove about halfway to glacier and boondocked at the home of an older couple that we found with boondockerswelcome.com. they were great. in the morning, i woke up bright and early and made the mad dash into glacier to try to secure a first-come-first-serve campsite. (spoiler alert: i got one! details to come).

and that was the end of our rest and recovery period. and the beginning of our epic visit to glacier national park….