The Great Cedars

Ernie spent a late night making a delicious Egg/Sausage casserole for our morning breakfast, along with fresh muffins, coffee, and juice. The Great Cedars National Park was our destination today. When we were at the Gibson’s about 10 years ago, they took us here and I remembered it being a lovely, easy walk through the forest. The trees are amazing, as amazing as the great redwoods in Washington/California. Nothing can compare to the great sequoias, but these were breathtaking and the smell of cedar was crisp, woodsy and wonderful.

 Gene and Ernie seem to have a great time getting their guests to play “Winnie-the-Pooh sticks” (where each person takes a stick, throw it in a stream and see whose stick comes under the bridge first.) Ernie also had Steve and Dad put their hands in the mountain stream and see who could keep their hands in the water the longest. Thinking that this sounded simple, they were both sport! So down to the creek they went placing their “macho” hands into the icy cold mountain stream. Jayna had just felt the water declaring that was the coldest water she had ever felt, and the guys didn’t believe her as they had already had their hands AND feet in the glacier water on the Icefields Parkway. One, two, three,…ten, eleven, twelve….and Dad couldn’t stand it any longer, his hands shot out of the water as he declared “That’s the coldest water I have ever felt in my life!”

We snapped a lot of pictures throughout the cedars. Some of the cedars would grow together creating these humongous trees with wonderful places to climb up into them and snap a picture.

After the Cedar’s we went to a Sturgeon Farm on the Kootenai Indiana Reservation. We had a wonderful tour and history lesson on the endangered fish. It was quite interesting.

Lunch followed by a 2 hour nap, then we headed downtown to a little restaurant called Chick-N-Chop where the guys ate porkchops and the girls ate soup. Gene took us tonight to the Natural Wildlife Refuge to see if we could find some moose as the weather was overcast and a little rain had fallen while we were taking a nap. Gene seems to know where to take us because not 10 minutes into our “Moose Safari”, he saw a Momma and her baby. Field glasses in hand, we all spotted the moose and then a little later we found another one in the meadow.

Ernie fixed fresh fruit over white cake with ice cream for dessert, which we ate around 10:00 pm. Then we headed up to the cabin, packed our bags and fell asleep around 11:00.