Montana: The Treasure State

#Montana most definitely lives up to its given name, the #treasurestate. The entire state is full of #hiddengems, and #serenebeauty. There are no shortages of #NationalParks, #hikingtrails, and #wildlife. This state is not only for #naturelovers, this state has something that everyone can enjoy. However, if your a nature lover, you will most definitely want to see Montana at some point in your life!

Our adventures in Montana started at Glacier Campground. A quaint little family owned campground just outside of Glacier National Park. Although the campground was small, the sites were private and spacious. A perk for us, is that the campground was nearly empty and the weather was perfect for fall. And who doesn't love fall camping? This was a luxury night for us. We cooked a nice warm meal, and indulged in a warm shower. We enjoyed our night in the woods, relaxing with some drinks and a game night.

Glacier National Park

Our next morning, we made a yummy breakfast and hit the road to Glacier National Park. Glacier campground was only a 5 minute drive from the West entrance to the park. So it didn't take long for us to start exploring the park. Although I was so excited to see what Glacier National Park had to offer, I was also somewhat nervous as we were in prime Grizzly Bear country. I've heard of several hikers, and campers who've had close encounters with one! However, thankfully during our adventures in Glacier National Park, we did not. Pheww! Our first stop in the park, and also my favorite stop, was to MacDonald Lake (pictured just below). This was, without a doubt.. the most stunning lake I have ever seen! The mountains reflect so perfectly on the glassy water, and the

mountains just had the most picturesque peaks, it was just amazing. Pictures couldn't possibly do this view justice! Even the drive getting to Lake MacDonald through Glacier National Park was breathtaking. Visiting in September is strongly recommended so you can experience the abundance of stunning fall colors. We made a number of road side stops to embrace the beauty. Just along the roadway were crystal clear streams, rapids, caves, and endless amounts of forests. Then the real fun began! Jesse took on the driving role and braved the "Going to the Sun" road. For those of you who have never heard of this, google it now, then add it to your bucket list! This was the craziest drive we have EVER done. We literally drove along a cliff, up the windy mountainous roads. I could see the long, never ending drop just by looking out the passenger window. The drive leads you through carved out rock tunnels, and brings you to some of the most stunning views of Montana! Glacier National Park offers never ending views, hikes, and opportunity for great memories to be made. We chose to experience Glacier National Park by

driving through the park, and we did not regret it! We left the park come evening time and started heading for Flathead Lake, where we stopped and watched a magical sunset among the mountains, and over the lake. We spent the night in a Walmart Parking lot. We had a quiet evening, watching some movies on our phone. The next morning we stopped at "Junction Rock Shop". As many of you know, Jesse loves crystals, and gems so this was a must stop. He was so happy we did stop, because he was lucky enough to score a super rare piece called "Bumblebee Jasper". This gem is found from the inside of a dormant volcano in Indonesia, making it a difficult gem to mine. However, more recently, the Volcano became active and erupted, making the gem that much more difficult to mine, if mining is even possible. Our next stop of the day was to "Garnet Ghost Town". The Garnet Ghost Town is Montana's most preserved ghost town, neither of us had seen a ghost town before, and with Halloween just around the corner it seemed like a fitting way to spend an afternoon. The remains of the old town were pretty well kept, and most buildings were

accessible and open for exploring. The town consisted of an old hotel, a saloon, a school, a couple homes, and a jail. It was really neat to see, we both really enjoyed it. And yes, the ghost town, had a creepy, "ghostly" feel to it, it was cool ;). We spent the evening travelling to Dillon's Crystal Park, which was a few hours away. Crystal Park was part of a National forest, where you could dig for natural crystal prisms. On our drive getting there, we passed by a heard of Elk, and passed several groups of Pronghorn Antelope. The Pronghorn was not something we expected we would see on this trip, so it was a nice surprise. By the time we arrived at

Crystal park it was dark, luckily for us, just a 10 minute drive from crystal park, still in the National forest was a campground. The National forest offers small, basic self serve campgrounds, at a very reasonable price. For just $8/night we had ourselves a beautiful private campsite, so we booked it for 2 nights, giving ourselves the full following day to dig for prisms. We had so much fun, digging and searching for crystal quartz prisms. Its pretty amazing that the prisms, are formed naturally. We were quite successful in our search, and left with a handful of amazing treasures. We met a lovely older couple there, who joined us for the day and taught us how to dig properly for the prisms, and even let us use their tools. Our day was cut short, when it unexpectedly began hailing, and before long it quickly turned to snow! On a positive note, along our drive back to camp we drove through the most beautiful double rainbow! It was incredible. When we arrived back to camp, we saw a red fox sitting in our site. We sat and watched it from the

Pioneer Mountains

truck, before it ran off. The weather was only getting worse, so we got cozied up and spent the night playing Yahtzee. It really is the simple things in life that bring us the most joy.

Yellowstone National Park

The moment we've all been waiting for..... our most exciting and final adventure in Montana... Yellowstone! We spent a full day driving from Crystal Park to the town of Yellowstone. When we arrived, we were greeted by so many cute shops and restaurants so we decided to go out for a nice Chinese dinner, before walking up and down the streets browsing all the cute shops. By the time we returned to the truck it was getting dark, so it was time to face our daily challenge, and find a place to sleep tonight. To no surprise, all the campgrounds were either closed or full, and all remaining motels were either full or far too expensive for one night. Then, a miracle happened... we found a really cute motel under our budget and only 10 minutes from the west entrance. It was perfect. We had a great night. we ended up spending much of our night at a bar nearby listening to people sing Karaoke and enjoyed a couple beverages. It turned out to be one of my favorite nights, thus far. The next morning we were up with the sun, and off to Yellowstone National Park. The BEST National park I have visited yet! Yellowstone is known for it's world famous geysers, volcanic geothermal activity, and it's abundance of wildlife. So we were sure to experience all of the must see's, which Yellowstone had to offer, and

we were NOT disappointed. We had the wildest couple of days in Yellowstone. We explored the amazing, colorful geysers, and volcanic springs including Old Faithful. Old Faithful got its name for its frequent and predicable eruptions. This geyser faithfully goes off every 60-90 minutes. We had the pleasure of sitting through an entire eruption, it was such a thrilling experience. We slowly cruised through the park looking for wildlife, and we were thrilled at the abundance of wildlife we saw by simply driving around. We total, we saw 16 bison, 8 mountain goats, countless elk, countless mule deer, a black bear, a grizzly mama and her cub, and a moose! Our one and only goal for Yellowstone was to see a grizzly, and on our last day we saw not one but two grizzlies, roaming in the distance. Something funny about Yellowstone.. in Mammoth Springs town (Yellowstone's town) the elk linger, and roam the streets as if there were no people nearby. It was the strangest thing, but yet SO COOL! We were SO close! The black bear we

saw was up on a ridge off the side of the road. We found ourselves stuck in a bear jam, but luckily we were close to the front so we could take advantage of the wildlife nearby. The photo we caught of the bear was mid yawn, we thought it was pretty funny timing. And to top off, our already perfect day, just outside the park entrance after we already called it a day, we found a female moose down by a swamp!

In addition to the wild experiences with wildlife, we did take advantage of some hikes to embrace the beauty surrounding us. we explored a couple of waterfalls, and hiked the west thumb geysers. The volcanic activity in West thumb was intense. Signs were placed all around the boardwalk stating not to walk off the boardwalk, as there were soft spots with boiling water spewing up. We also hiked the Mid day basin geyser, which is among the world's third largest geyser! We were unable to complete this hike however, due to the thick and heavy steam, coming off the geyser. It was difficult to see and breathe. The icing on the cake to our experience in Yellowstone National Park was being a part of a bison traffic jam. Yellowstone is known for the abundance of bison within the park, and more often than not, visitors to Yellowstone, especially in the morning and evening, get to witness a herd of bison cross the road, and walk among the vehicles. On our way out on our last day, we sat in traffic for about an hour, waiting for all the bison to get off the road. There were SO many of them! It was incredible. In terms of wildlife viewings in Yellowstone, we were beyond fortunate. We saw everything we were hoping for and more. We could have never imagined such an amazing experience at Yellowstone. If you want to see wildlife... Yellowstone is the place to go! Montana, was so much

more than we had hoped for. One thing we have learned on our trip is that, your going to experience so much that you never would have expected to happen, and the things you did expect might not happen like you'd imagined. There's something so thrilling in the spontaneity that life throws at you. So far this trip has been full of unexpected, wonderful adventures, and we wouldn't have had it any other way. Well, that's a wrap for this blog. We hope you enjoyed reading as much as we enjoyed Montana.

Until next time, stay wild.

Jesse & Jessica.