Glacier - Day 3: Trail of the Cedars & Lake McDonald

Today is the planned "rest" day - shorter hike in the AM, lunch at Lake McDonald Lodge, and then a condo swim. Let's see how things go!

Well, first slight hiccup -- finding parking for our planned Trail of the Cedars hike. The hike itself was only 1 mile, but the parking situation was so bad we had to park over a half mile away! I guess we will start the day with the Going-to-the-Sun road hike. The kids were in pretty high spirits - lots of "let's pretend to be Avengers" action as we single file marched down the "highway."

Even this short intro walk had some pretty nice river spots!

The Trail of the Cedars is basically a series of wooden walkways through some ancient cedar trees. Baba posing with some mossy rocks.

NaiNai posing with her first spot of the day: Jack-o'-Lantern tree knot!

Because I sort of promised the kids it was an easier hike day, they protested mightily upon hearing that the Trail of the Cedars actually leads to the Avalanche Lake Trail hike...which is beautiful...but 4 miles long. So BaBa graciously volunteered to stay behind with the kids halfway through while I went ahead with YeYe and NaiNai for some more steps. This was actually a really nice hike -- I liked it better than Grinnell personally -- lots of varied scenery. Here's a vista:

Shaded forest with dappled lighting:

And rushing Creek along much of the way:

I actually turned around about 0.25 miles from the end (I know, why not just keep going!) - well, the twins has been complaining very heavily about how I kept going back on my word and how I said it was only a mile hike today...I knew I was close to the end (with a view of Avalanche Lake and all its waterfalls) but it would probably be another 30 min...mom guilt is strong!

Here's a photo of what I WOULD have seen (YeYe and NaiNai did go all the way). They did say it was pretty crowded but you wouldn't know it from this lovely photo of serenity!

Adding a particularly nice wildlife shot from NaiNai as well:

Meanwhile, the kids were very happy to see me return and start heading back to the cars for lunch.

They even obliged me with some photo posing!

They actually showed me some cool tips with the phone camera -- I didn't know you could do a vertical panorama! This might be one of my favorite shots of the trip so far:

So...next hiccup of the day, because we made it back to the car sooner, we headed down to Lake McDonald Lodge sooner and started on lunch. Well...lunch went by and no sight of YeYe and NaiNai. The lack of reception in the park meant that we had some ships passing in the night moments -- everyone eventually gave up trying to find each other and we took two separate cars back to the condo. I felt a little bad that we didn't really have a proper Lake McDonald outing though so we stopped at a pullout. I was honestly just hoping for a landscape photo...but turns out there was a walk down to a beachy area and a ton of perfect stones for skipping. 

Turns out I'm pretty bad at skipping stones. Everyone else was getting three or four regularly but I could only manage a two-skip (and even that only twice out of a dozen or so attempts). So instead I practiced my new vertical panorama-taking skills. 😆 

Reiya actually was brave enough to go in the actual lake. 

Yeah after that reaction no one else followed her. 

Another obligatory cousin group shot - big smiles all around.

At R's request, a shot of them triumphantly throwing handfuls of pebbles in the lake. 

That's it for today -- another beautiful day in Glacier!

After we made it back to the condo, it was pretty late already so we nixed the swim plan and instead utilized the condos full kitchen to scrounge together a hearty meal of camping supply leftovers. With full bellies, we watched as Argentina nearly got shown up by Cape Verde (crazy!) and then headed to bed. Tomorrow, we have our Logan Pass Shuttles...crossed fingers for Highline opening up!