Glacier National Park - Day Five: Columbia Falls Water Park and Rocky Point on Lake McDonald

 The next morning, we had to move sites as I'd been grabbing cancelled reservations and piecing them together for the whole trip. It wasn't too bad to throw everything in the car and get set up in our new site. We ended up getting two nights here in one of the best spots in the campground - it had a filtered view of the lake and a little trail to get down to it. Perfect! We were so excited! After the big move, we took a vacation day and headed to the water park in Columbia Falls. So much fun!

We got the pass where you get to do everything - which included bumper cars and mini golf. The kids LOVED bumper cars. I think they could have played for hours on these. I tried it too - it actually wasn't as bad of impact from crashes as I thought it would be. I'm really glad we tried it.

Mini golf was slightly stressful as none of us are very good and there were a couple groups behind us. But... we managed a decent 18 holes and it was fun to test our skills on greens.

Had to buy one more round of bumper cars for these two....

The kids talked me into going on the slides, too, including this one "big red" that has a wall you slide up and come back down, similar to the Howling Tornado at Great Wolf.

We stayed all day at the water park, got showers, and then came back to relax at camp. After dinner we did a two-mile hike to Rocky Point on the north shore of the lake. From the point, it is possible to see a large vista of mountains standing tall above the lake. It was really beautiful. Reed was intrigued by the rocky ledges and even went for a dip.We wrapped up the evening with a competitive game of Farkle which was a lot of fun, too.

Glacier National Park - Day Four: Baring, St. Mary, and Virginia Falls, Fish Creek Camp

 Plan A was to wake up early and try to get a parking spot at Logan Pass to hike Hidden Lake. We were successful, but the fog was thick. We dozed in the car for an hour hoping it would lift, but it never did. So, Plan B was to do the waterfall trail at the west end of St. Mary Lake. We got to see three named falls and numerous others on the six mile hike. It was truly a rewarding and enjoyable hike with the kids who were really into it and didn't even complain about the length! Baring Falls was the first one we came to.

We also got to a spot where the trail dips down to the turquoise waters of St. Mary Lake.

St. Mary Falls was number two. The plunge of it was powerful and the green, swirling pools below were mesmerizing. It was really interesting to see it contrasted the with almost pink  color of the rocks in that gorge.

This one was unnamed but the horizontal stacked rock made for lots of ledges and invited climbing.

Finally Virginia Falls wrapped up the hike. It was an impressive drop and at the bottom it was possible to walk on a flat ledge area to get pretty near the base of the falls.

St. Mary Falls on the way out.

We were now at the midway point of our trip and moved from hotels to camping at Fish Creek campground on the northwest corner of Lake McDonald. I rigged up a tarp in case of rain, but luckily it had stopped! We took it easy that evening, explore the campground, skipped rocks at the lake, and were happy to have everything set up.