Day 5: A Break from Hiking

Wednesday of our trip was the day to take a break from hiking and enjoy a few of the other activities GNP has to offer. The day started out colder than we had hoped, so we switched our whitewater rafting trip to the afternoon and horseback riding to the morning. They would not let Daniel ride a horse (too young), by himself or with someone, but the girls REALLY wanted to, so we split up. The girls and I went horseback riding, and the boys and Rick went on a boat tour on Lake McDonald. We have occasionally ridden horses, although we are by no means equestrians. However, anywhere that we go that has horses, the girls in particular are BEGGING to ride them. Actually, they beg us to have a horse as well, but I don't think the backyard is quite big enough.

Audri with her horse Bradley, before the ride.

Dailie getting to know Folsom.

Eliza on her horse, Rat. My horse was named Chester, but there weren't any good pictures of me on Chester.
We went on a 4 mile trail ride on a 50 year old trail in the park. We crossed McDonald Creek twice, once with a view out over the lake. I was right behind the most talkative guide, so I asked lots of questions and learned many things. One of the things I learned was how to keep my horse in the middle of the trail. He kept wanting to walk on the left side of the trail. I got much more serious about keeping him in the middle after he ran me into a tree. Nearly took my leg of, wedging my knee between the tree and the horse. I had a nasty bruise that turned many beautiful colors throughout the week. Thanks, Chester. But, the best thing our guide taught me was about huckleberries. Before leaving home we read some about huckleberries, and I looked up on Google to see what they look like. Taylor, our guide pointed out the bushes on the ride, and even jumped off his horse at one time to taste one to see if they were ripe. He said they were close. I figured we needed to try them sometime while we were there, but honestly I thought "I've tried a lot of different berries in my life- how different can they be?". The locals were crazy about them, and every shop you stepped into sold anything and everything huckleberry, and not just food. Anyway, more about huckleberries later...

Rick, Dallin and Daniel took a boat tour on Lake McDonald, and had a great time themselves.

Daniel wanted to sit/stand in all the different places on the boat, and even got to steer for awhile. You can see a picture of that in the video.

A pretty panoramic of the view from the boat.

They also stepped into the Lake McDonald Lodge, built in 1913, just 3 years after the National Park was established. At that time, there were no roads in the park, and the lodge was reached by water, across the lake. It was beautiful. They also stopped in the gift shop and bought some huckleberry chap stick. They came and picked us up from our trail ride, and we hustled back to Great Northern Resort, who was also our outfitter for our whitewater rafting trip.
This was a great experience. It took some convincing for them to let Daniel go. I could tell that they really didn't want to let us, but in the end they left it up to us, and we decided he'd be just fine. They were worried about him being easily thrown from the boat because of his weight. Joe was our guide, and he was great. He loved the fact that we had our whole family out on the river, out hiking, and out in nature. The first 30 minutes of the trip were just floating through smooth water, and he took that time to instruct us well on what we needed to do once we hit the rapids. I remember that he said to keep paddling through them. The rapids were Class II and III. We hit the first one, and I stopped paddling. I don't know who else did, but I did. I was just in awe of the water. I heard Joe yell "keep paddling", and then we hit a rock. I bounced from the left side of the boat to the middle. Dailie bounced from the right side of the boat to the river!! I was pretty nervous at first, until the raft turned and I was able to see Dailie's face. She was very calm, and working her way back to the boat. Plus, Joe jumped right to action. Before I knew it, she was back in the boat. I asked her how she was. Her response- "It was fun!!". So, no serious trauma from that experience, that's good. We did, however, all learn how very cold rivers made from glacier melt can be. Brrrr!! Later in the trip, when the water was calm again, each of the kids voluntarily got in the river for a little swimming, just to try it out. Wow- cold.After Dailie fell out of the boat, Eliza was pretty nervous for the next few rapids, but by the end she was loving it, and asking to go again the next day. She can be pretty dramatic, and we were glad this photo caught a little of that. Daniel stayed right in the middle of the boat the whole time, holding on to the center line. He loved it, and Joe got a kick out of him. Throughout the rest of the week, we'd see Joe occasionally at the resort. He would always come and talk to the kids, and they loved it. He said Daniel was the youngest he had ever taken on the river. The rafting was a great experience. I'm so glad we did it.

It was still relatively early in the evening when we got done, but we'd had a full day already, so we decided to take things easy for the evening. We'd seen this maze on the way into our resort, so we decided to head back and check it out.


The Glacier Maze, a life size, 3-D maze with 1.5 miles of passageway. We divided into two teams. Dallin, Dailie and Audri vs. Mom, Dad, Eliza and Daniel.

Not only did you have to find your way through the maze, but you had to make your way to each of the four towers, to receive 4 different stamps on your card. It was lots of fun. Dallin, Dailie and Audri won : ).


After the maze adventure we headed to the Huckleberry Patch for our first try of huckleberries. We got huckleberry shakes, huckleberry ice cream, and huckleberry pie. We learned that huckleberries only grow in the wild, in the mountains of Montana and Idaho. Many people have tried unsuccessfully to cultivate them. WE read an article about a botanist who was successful in transplanting some huckleberry bushes, but not only had half of them died after a few short years, but none of them had ever born fruit. I found them fascinating, and after tasting them, I was a believer. The best way I can think of to describe the taste is kind of like a cross between a blueberry and a black raspberry. So yummy, and so fun that you can't just buy them anywhere.
Wednesday may have been our break from hiking, but that didn't mean we didn't wear ourselves out by the end of the day!! We were happy to hit our heads on our pillows at the cabin at the end of this day as well, only this time we had the lingering taste of huckleberries in our mouths....