Family Trip...

We planned a little family trip for the end of summer... it would have been awesome to plan a 2 week summer vacation but with everyone's summer schedule we were lucky to find 4 free days and so off we went...

**Day one...**a little family selfie before we hit the road!

The night before we were looking over the map of the route we wanted to take and we decided to take a different way to our first stop at Lewis and Clark Caverns.  So literally hours before we left we decided to add in a couple stops that were along the way.  The new first stop was Quake Lake... none of us had ever been and it was a good place to stretch and stop.

Watching the visitor center movie and looking out onto where the earthquake happened was an eerie feeling.

If time would have allowed we would have hiked the trail and monument area... so we will have to stop again.  I thought the detail on the railings of the visitor center were pretty cool...

As I said the night before we changed up the route and when I noticed we were going to be so close to Virginia City... I said we should stop there as well.  We've been watching the AMC series this summer called the "American West" I had originally recorded just one episode that was about Crazy Horse so that we had a better understanding who the warrior was... but Little Bug (and us parents) loved the series and so we watched a few more that included the stories of Wyatt Earp, Jessie James and Billy the Kid.  Since it was about the wild west, the people and the boom towns I thought a stop in Virginia City would be fun to see a real life preserved town.

What made it even cooler was the fact that I had remembered something about Virginia City when reading my 3rd great grandmother's journal of her trip out west on the wagon train. I re-read the journal before we left and... yes she had met up with her husband in Bozeman and then they traveled to Virginia City in Sept 1864. He was a placer miner and they lived in Virginia City for a year!!

We started reading the historical plaques in Virginia city and they mentioned the date they were built... hard to believe that so many of them had been built in the spring of 1864 and my 3rd great grandparents would have seen this!!!

To stand 152 years later where your ancestors before you had stood and imagine what they saw, what their day to day life was like and how they felt during this time is quite cool... gives me goosebumps everytime. I shared this info with the kiddos and Walker kept saying, "This is so cool" as we peeked into each building.  We ended up spending much more time than we had planned but it was so worth it... again another stop we will have to revisit.

I was obsessed with the patina of the wood... LOVE... this color and the history these boards have witnessed...

Ainsley loved all the photo opportunities and took some awesome artistic photos...

Next we headed to Lewis and Clark Caverns and were lucky to get the next available cave tour which was just in 20 minutes... did a little photo op while we waited in the visitor center..

It's funny the things you remember as a kid... remembered the hike up to the caves as being much more flatter with no switchbacks!..and that the beaver slide was the first thing you did when you entered the caves with it being a little more thrilling... ha!

My camera did not like the low light situations but I did get this beauty just before we finished the tour...

To end the day of non stop fun we went to the Museum of the Rockies which was on Walker's list...

We had come later in the evening and it was the perfect time... we pretty much had the place to ourselves which is always awesome so you can look without feeling rushed.

Walker loved it all.. I thought this was exhibit was the best... the most extensive collection of triceratops skulls...

Three out of four McFarlands could have spend a few more hours there... in fact the almost 2 hours we had there flew by... couldn't believe they were announcing the closure while we were there.

We got to Billings very late... but had an amazing first day of our trip.