Journey to Montana ...

So I recently came back from a wonderful trip to Northwestern Montana with my son Taylor. This trip was great in so many ways, one of which was it being the first mother-son trip I've taken with him. We did a combination of camping and hotels and the camping was the best.

Since I'm in training mode, I told him that I was going to need to continue to train while we traveled and he agreed and was supportive. He timed me while I swam and even crawled out of bed early to go on a bike ride with me. When I went in the water for the lake swim, I told him to time me and let me know every ten minutes and my plan was to swim for 30 minutes. A note about the lake... it was Bowman Lake in the northwest corner of Glacier Park, and it takes quite a drive to get there, not counting the drive from Seattle. The water is absolutely pristine and you can see the bottom as clearly as if it is two feet away. Since I've been open water swimming in Lake Washington with weeds and slimy rocks, this was truly amazing. I was the only person in this huge lake, other than a couple kayaks around the edge. It was an awesome experience. So I swam for a bit and then asked Tay how long and it had only been 5 minutes. At that point it became pretty clear I would not make it for 30 minutes, so I swam for 11 minutes and then decided to call it an experience.

I planned on doing more swims in the lakes and for longer, but given the lakes in Glacier Park are coming straight from melting snow and around 50 degrees, one seemed sufficient.

 The Northwest corner of Montana is lovely country and we got to also see plenty of animals. We seemed to be sharing both of our campsites with deer. A grizzly bear cub crossed right in front of our car (thankfully we didn't see the mom) and saw lots of eagle nests, and soaring eagles, chipmunks, squirrels and other furry things I know not the name of.

And, we did the usual Glacier Park activity of driving on the Road to the Sun, which quite frankly scared the hell out of me. The scenery is lovely! But... the road is very narrow and winding and the closer you get to Logan Pass on one side is a rocky cliff going straight up and the other side of the road is a drop off going straight down with no guard rail.

The total trip was 1300 miles in 4 days and 4 nights. Great food along the way, and the camp food was mostly cooked by Taylor... yea, I love when my kids like to cook for me. We listened to music on the iPod and books on CD loaned by friends.

This is definitely one of the highlights of my 50th year!