I have five siblings (Faith, Eva, Maria, Isaac, & Aaron), and every other summer my family will go on a trip to another state. This summer we went to Glacier National Park in Montana for nine days with our cousins from Colorado, and it was quite the trip. I was a little disappointed about going somewhere “cold” for vacation, you know. Because when you go on vacation, you usually go somewhere warm, right? Well, I had nothing to complain about because for the majority of our trip it was an average of 85˚F during the day with highs of around 103˚F. The route is about 1,200 miles long and it took us two days to get there with stops, and one night at a campground. To start things off, we had to book our campsite in Fish Creek Campground in January to be there in June, and by the time we were starting to book it on the website most of the sites were already gone! Fortunately, we found a campsite that was available for the entire time that we were wanting to be there, and that was next door to the campsite our cousins had reserved.

            The morning of our trip my parents got us all up early so that we could help pack up our 12-passenger van and pop-up camper and then leave shortly after breakfast. That didn’t happen. We ended up leaving closer to shortly before lunch. That’s pretty much what ends up happening when we go anywhere. That day we crossed through North Dakota, and that night we camped in a campground in Montana.

            That campground was one of the best ones I’ve ever been to. It wasn’t because it was fancy or had nice amenities or anything of that sort. In fact, it was extremely basic. It only had a one room restroom, one in-ground firepit (that we weren’t even allowed to use because of a fire ban), and a picnic table, what made it so amazing was the fact that it was right up against a part of the Badlands. You could literally walk out of your campsite and explore. It was hills on top of hills as far as you could see. So, of course, my siblings and I decided to take a self-guided tour while my parents set up camp. We went up at least three connected hills until we were so high up that we could see the entirety of our campground! There were spiky plants and some little cactuses growing all over, and most of the foliage was a type of spiky bush, all growing in colorfully striped dirt. The sunset was also incredible from that high up.

            The next morning an almost identical repeat of the first day happened, except for the fact that we got up at like 5 AM Montana time (6 AM Minnesota time) to pack up and get going “early.” We left shortly after breakfast. Then we discovered a catastrophe. Remember how I said that it was very hot? Well, the AC in our car decided to conveniently quit for the rest of our trip. So, the whole day we were driving in a suffocatingly hot car with only some battery powered fans we bought from Walmart and some water to keep us cool. Twelve passenger vans desperately need a working AC system. Then on the twisty, windy, narrow, and cliff-sided road into Glacier, our windshield got all smudged up. And of course, around each tight corner we were driving directly into the sun, so my dad literally could not see where he was going. The worst was when you were blindly turning a corner and then you’d see a car headed straight for you out your window, then you’d shout “Car! There’s a car on the left!!!” so my dad wouldn’t smash into them because he was having to drive with his head sticking out the window. Even then, he had a hard time seeing with the sun in his eyes. We were on that road for about an hour.

            After the trip, I asked my dad, “What’s the craziest and most stressful thing you’ve ever done?”

          He said, “Probably driving down that road with only 5% visibility in our 12-passenger van while pulling our pop-up camper.”

            My dad’s not one to get stressed easily, so that’s saying something. 

            For the majority of our stay, we went on hiking trips. One of the first days we were there we decided to hike to Avalanche Lake. Since we started out in the morning, and it was a bit of a longer, uphill hike, we ended up hiking during the hottest part of the day, so when we finally got to the lake, we all just jumped in. It was freezing, but it felt good. The water was crystal clear blue, and it wasn’t very deep either. The bottom of the lake was a silty white clay. The lake was in a crater with mountains encircling it. There were even spots where you could see the glaciers melting down into the lake on the far side. 

            Another time we decided to go hiking at Logan Pass, but the trail was closed because there had been a momma bear that had chased some hikers. So, we decided to go to Virginia Falls. On the way, we passed St. Mary Falls, which was blue from glacial minerals. It was very pretty at the falls. There was a pool of water at the bottom that we got to “swim” in, and some of us even went under the water fall, which literally knocked the wind out of us. The foliage was almost jungle-like. Of course, we had left early to get to Logan Pass on time, so it was midmorning by the time we set out for Virginia Falls. The trip back to our car was the most agonizing thing ever. It was about 98˚F with the sun beating down on us, and it was a 2-mile, mostly uphill hike back to our car. Then, when we got back, we discovered that our car battery had died. So, we had to find someone to jumpstart our car so we could get back to our campsite. Also, if you remember we still had no AC.

            On our second to last day, we decided to go on a hike in East Glacier, an hour and a half away. The only problem was that East Glacier was closed, so we talked to some rangers and they recommended a hike in Two Medicine that was about 2 miles round trip if you took a ferry to get to the trail that was over half way to the falls. So we decided to do that hike. It was a bit of a drive to get to Two Medicine. On the way there in the car, my three year old cousin Tessa was complaining about being carsick, so my Autie Laura gave her some medicine so she would feel better. Then when one of her sisters asked where we were going, her mom said Two Medicine. Tessa said, "Yeah I need two medicines cuz my tummy hurts!"

The only problem was that we didn’t know about the ferry, and by the time we got there, the ferry was done for the day. We ended up starting all the way at the beginning of the trail unknowingly and hiked all three miles just to get to Twin Falls. It was super fun there. We ate supper and then went rock hunting and climbed up part of the water fall. Then it was getting late and the mosquitos were starting to come out, so we decided to head back. Now in Glacier there are lots of Grizzly bears, even more than in Yellowstone or any other park for that matter. As we were hiking, we were making lots of noise to scare the bears away, but somehow, we got separated into two groups, and my dad and my uncle went ahead with most of the kids. My mom, my aunt, two of my cousins and I were bringing up the rear. That’s when we discovered that somehow the dads had ended up all three cans of bear spray, and we had none. So, there we were, two miles to go, in the middle of a forest with no bear spray, being eaten alive by mosquitos and hungry and tired. My cousin Julia, who is one, decided that now was the perfect time to fill her diaper. We had to stop again to change her diaper and put on more mosquito spray. By that time Julia was so tired that she just started screaming at the top of her lungs and didn’t stop until we were almost back. My cousin Reiah, who is 9, was so tired that she had to ride in the baby carrier while my mom carried Julia. The only bonus was that was a natural way to repel bears. My dad said that he could hear her all the way from where they were, way up ahead. Once we finally got back to our cars, we had hiked six miles, were covered in bug bites, and were ready for bed. It was fun though.

  We still had to drive back to the campsite, but we stopped at a gas station to get gas and ice cream as a reward, but they were all out of ice cream. So, we drove at least ten miles out of our way to go to some random ice cream shop in a small town. When we got there, we found out they had closed twenty minutes ago, so we decided to just drive back to our campsite, which took about another hour and a half. By that time, it was almost 9 PM, so when we got back to the campground area, it was 10:30 PM. Then we stopped at another gas station to see if we could get ice cream there. Unfortunately they were closed. You’d think that we’d just go back to our campsites and get ice cream the next day, right? Nope. We drove around for another ten minutes to find another gas station, but they were all closed. I really don’t know what my parents were thinking. Driving everywhere at almost 11 PM just to get some ice cream.

Our last day was really fun. We got to go boating and swimming in Lake McDonald near our campground. And we did not go on anymore hikes. I have a fitness watch, and during that trip, I was getting an average of 20,000 steps a day. I think my parents were getting tired of hiking at that point too.

The next morning, we packed up our campsite, said goodbye to our cousins, and headed out with no AC. Driving back home was definitely way, way worse than the drive to Glacier. It was way hotter, we were all tired, and dirty, and we just wanted to go home and take a shower. We slept one night at that campground in the Badlands, and then the next morning we drove back through North Dakota. The only bonus of having no AC was that we stopped three times to get ice cream, which was epic!

Looking back on that trip I had so much fun, and I would totally do it again with AC.