Melting in Kalispell

We hit West Shores State Park about 8pm, where we discovered exactly how efficient our new 'fridge', a Yeti cooler is. Frozen beer coulda made it a bad day, but who can complain about a cooler that works well??  It was a beautiful site on Flathead Lake, close enough that Reese could skip rocks across crystal clear glassy water. We all jumped in for a quick, surreptitious family skinny dip before eating dinner at 9:30.  Still light. It gave me a glimpse of what was to come, and I regretted not working on some sort of black out curtains for the van. How is Alaska going to work?  They finally fell asleep around 11 to be woken up at 8. 

Kalispell is a sweet little town suffering from global warming as is all of the world. 95 degrees at 4:30 this afternoon as we wait for the van to be finished. We amused (and tortured) ourselves today by riding through Woodland Park.  We fed fowl, cried because it was too hot, cried because we weren't first, climbed trees and finally went to town to be soothed by air conditioning and ice cream. Not sure I did a great job of disguisiing who 'we' is. Rich and I tried to hide in our phones when we could, but battery life only lasts so long. As anyone who knows me well knows, heat is not my happy place. Apparently it not someone else's as well.

So here we are, no more complaining at the La Quinta, with a highly chlorinated indoor pool, air conditioning and a TV. We arrived as homeless folks on foot, dragging suitcases and large bags as it was down the road from the Auto Haus, where we left the rest of our life.  Guess we'll hit Glacier tomorrow. 

West Shore State Park

You can still drink a frappé beer!