Summer is finally here. Well, almost. Willa has 2 more weeks of school. But the weather has started to warm up and everything is green again. Winter in Montana is great, but summer is glorious. We took advantage of a nice, three-day weekend and played. Three days and three adventures...
Rafting the Dearborn River
Matt floated the Dearborn River last spring and thought it was so pretty, he wanted to share it with us this year. You can only float the river during a short window in the spring when the water levels are high enough.
I was a little nervous to bring the kids. The float is an all day commitment. We put in around 9:30 am and didn't finish until after 7:30 pm. We were slowed down a couple hours by a friend that came along in his own raft. He stopped a lot to fish and fell behind us. The kids were great. I think the first hour was the hardest. The kids settled in to the day pretty quickly and they all took naps in the afternoon.
napping...
Montana sure has grown on me. I really didn't know if I would like living here. I love living in a state where it is super easy to spend the day in the middle of nowhere.
Hiking in the Bridger Mountains
We also spent part of the weekend hiking in the Bridger Mountains. The plan was to hike to Fairy Lake near Bozeman, BUT the road was still closed for winter. The road closure turns an easy 1.2 mile hike into an 11 mile hike. Needless to say, we didn't even try to get to the lake... another day... when the road is open. Willa has been an awesome hiker since she was little. Clark finally turned a corner. He loved the hike and lead the pack with Willa. Oliver is still young and wanted to be carried. I'd say he hiked half of it. We went about 2 miles. It is such a pretty part of Montana.
Museum of the Rockies
We spent Sunday night in a hotel in Bozeman so we could visit the Museum of the Rockies on Monday. Willa and Clark ranked the hotel as their favorite thing of the weekend. So silly. The "dinosaur museum" was a close second.
A museum full of dinosaur bones found right here in Montana. What could be cooler than that? It's not a huge museum, but it didn't disappoint. The bones were really cool to see. We've been watching dinosaur documentaries on Netflix lately so it was fun for the kids (and me) to see so many bones and fossils up close.
My favorite part of the museum were the T-Rex and Triceratops skulls lined up from baby to adult. It was really neat to see the changes that happened as they grew.
There is also a planetarium. Matt made sure he saw all of the shows. Oliver only lasted one and was a little scared during parts of it. Willa and Clark watched 2 of the 3 shows.
Such a fun weekend with three fun adventures. Bring on summer!!
