Day 73 - Great Falls

This morning Gretchen and I woke up around 7.  Shortly afterwards Christina came bouncing in.  She and I took off to the kitchen to make pancakes. In MS we have a gas stove and here we have an electric stove (one of those flat top ones).  For the past few months the most cooking I have done is scramble some eggs in the mornings.  I was quickly reminded again this morning why I  prefer gas over electric.  I burned the first pancake and nearly the 2nd because the eye was so hot.  I never have this issue in MS when I make these but Gretchen says its due to the electric vs gas cooktop. Oh well, that just meant that we had to smell that burnt smell for the morning in the house.

We got the kids up shortly after everything was ready and got them moving.  It is no small feat to get our household of 7 out the door on time on any morning and today was no exception.  Although even against all odds we made it out the door for the 2nd day in a row on time (amazing).  I don't know if we have told you or not but the dress code for Church here is quite different than the Churches in the south.  The words casual dress can be stretched in lots of ways.  So this morning when Gretchen first walked out of the closet I thought she had truly taken on the culture here because she had on a t-shirt with a skirt.  Thankfully I just caught her in mid-dress.  We were headed to early church at Hannaford which is at 9 am (so we had a little extra time vs early church at POPC).  Today's service was great. The youth pastor (Gezer) who is from Brazil preached.  He was very entertaining and had a good message on how we all need to worry only about what God thinks and not others.  We have to stand up for what we believe in otherwise we will get consumed into the culture we live in and our freedoms will no longer be around.

After Church we headed back home to pack up and get on the road. Today's trip in MT was to go see the legendary town of Great Falls and hopefully see the falls.  Great Falls is about 1 hour and 1/2 from Helena so not too far.  We took our picnic lunch and spread it out at a park there in Great Falls.  The first thing on our list was to go to the Lewis and Clark Interpretive Center.  This was a great place to learn more about the Lewis and Clark adventures.  I am just amazed at what these men had to do and what they faced.  It was really cool to see all the different artifacts of theirs and the Indians they had to deal with along the way.  Great Falls was an area where they had to pull their boats out of the water and carry them 18 miles around the falls which took 10 days of their journey.  The odd part is that there are 5 falls all together so you have to drive down river to see them all.  We were quite disappointed to find that in the early 1900's that at almost each of the falls a dam has been built right above it so it is not quite as natural as it was when Lewis and Clark found it. In fact one of them is completely submerged in the dam.  It was also interesting that the landscape in Great Falls is very different from the other parts of MT that we have been to. It is more flat with not as many mountains. 

After the Interpretive Center we drove next door to see a Natural Spring which Lewis and Clark found and a fish hatchery (for trout). The spring was awesome. It pumps 150,000 gallons of water a day into the Missouri River and it is so clear you can see down 10 feet or more. Out of the spring is what is called the shortest river in the world.  It is about 20 or 30 feet from the spring to the Missouri.  The kids especially liked the fish hatchery.  We were allowed to walk around a viewing pool that had the mother fish in it and then we could see through the fence over into the other pools where there were literally hundreds of smaller fish.  There was also a lovely park surrounding the spring and we played there for a few minutes also.  Today was a very hot day in MT so playing under the trees where it was 10 to 15 degrees cooler was nice.   Our kids constantly comment on how nice and soft the grass is in people's yards here (and the park).

Great Falls due to its size is also one of the places people in the state go shopping.  The girls had been trying to find an Old Navy and there was one here. Actually the only one in the entire state. so we spent an hour or so there and headed home.

I wanted to apologize for a previous post.  My mother-in-law pointed out that I apparently cussed without knowing it. I spelled the word dam incorrectly. Hopefully no one took offense.