Today, we woke early and drove a few hours to Big Sky Wate park in Montana. We had a campground reservation at Western Inn and Campground right across the highway. We decided to park at the waterpark anyway, because our site in the campground was reserved, so it didn’t matter what time we arrived, and none of us wanted to walk back to the campground in wet bathing suits. They had plenty of parking for RVs and you could go in and out of the park to your vehicle if you need to. We paid our admission and scoped the place out. It wasn’t huge and commercialized like some waterparks, but this was a small town, mid-size park with lots of nice features. People were encouraged to bring chairs, blankets, coolers, and picnic baskets. They had tons of picnic tables in both shade and sun for everyone to use. People were crashed everywhere on the grass on blankets, but we took a picnic table in the shade near the 25-foot diameter hot tub. You could probably fit 25 people in this thing. The huge hot tub was the hub of the park and you could see everything from there. They had a large kiddie or wading pool which we didn’t get in, and several water slides. Three water slides were for kids under 9 years old, 2 slides were the tall, straight-down speed slides, two slides were for inner tubes, and four more slides started and ended in the same place and were meant for “racing.” First we did the two inner-tube slides, then the four racing slides. There were four color-coded runs – green, yellow, red, and black. Each one was a little different and we each rotated through several times until we’d all raced on each color. It seemed that the green and black slides were the fastest. Hubby and our daughter did the tall, straight-down slide. (I don’t do those, so I sat in the hot tub). After so many days of traveling and hiking, the hot water and jets felt good on my feet and calves. We spent several hours playing on the slides and getting in the hot tub. They also had an arcade, rock wall, go-karts, and lots of other stuff too. Two things that we thought really added to the small-town, family atmosphere of the place was the fact that they played music in the main hot-tub area all day, and they had two large grills that they kept going all day for people to cook their own food on. No wonder so many local people had brought coolers full of food – we saw people grilling hot dogs, hamburgers, etc. They also had ice cream and a snack bar with snacks and soda to drink. We didn’t use any of those things, we had just eaten lunch and had water bottles with us.
In the hot tub, we met a family from Holland (as in The Netherlands, not Michigan) and talked to them for quite a while. The wife mentioned that they had come through Glacier National Park and had been told that the campground was full, so they decided to come to the water park. I started getting nervous because we didn’t have a reservation for the campground in Glacier. The one campground near the campstore and visitor center and the shuttle bus stops doesn’t take reservations, so we were taking our chances.
Around dinner time, we left the water park and went to check in to our campground. First, we stopped at the gas station across the street to have the propane tank filled on our RV. We checked in to the campground and leveled up in our spot. We noticed a press release in the registration lobby from Glacier National Park announcing how busy they had been this summer – even breaking attendance records for the month of July. It noted that the park was especially busy on weekends. Great – we would be arriving on a Saturday morning. We made dinner and walked around the campground a bit. We kicked around a soccer ball with our son and our daughter worked on her throwing for softball. Hubby and I formulated a plan for getting to Glacier National Park early and checking in the campground for empty spaces, but the plan relied on us getting up early – again. (The kids are really getting tired of the early wake up calls!)
(There are no pictures for this entry - I promised the kids that our water park day was for our fun only - no photography!)
