Snowmobile Holiday in Montana

Nathan & Carson getting ready to go up in the hills.

We booked a condo and went on a road trip to Seeley Lake, Montana.  Originally we booked it as a trip to just get away from the chaos over the holidays.  In the end it became a search for snow as this was a very brown Christmas in most of Alberta.  The weather in Medicine Hat while we were gone was crazy with some daily temperatures of 16 degrees Celsius.  We found this great little town that is a snowmobile haven and although the locals kept telling us how little snow they had, there were amazing groomed trails all around with miles and hours of entertainment.  We were there over New Year's and being the party people that we are, we were all in bed by 9:30 on New Year's Eve!

 We were of course completely shocked that we had to drive 7 hours south of our Canadian home to find snow!  You can see by the some of the pictures though that it was light jacket weather and there were perfect conditions for sledding.  We only have one trail sled so we took turns taking the boys up into the hills on the various trails on most days.  We rented another trail sled on our last full day there and went on a 26 mile adventure on the trails.  We got a little lost but managed to find our way back.  Jay only had one major melt down, Clarke saw the allusive "kitty" in the mountains, and I managed to not tip my sled!  It was a good day!  In the middle of the trip we put together the GT racer and the boys loved riding it behind the sled at the trail head and telling Daddy each time to go even faster.  Nathan looked so small as they were pulling away but the only one who crashed off the racer with any regularity was Daddy.  Carson did take one flying leap off over a jump at the end but everyone was safe and happy.

Clarke had to pick Nathan up once or twice but always right at the end, within 10 feet of our truck.

Clarke driving off with Nathan on the GT Racer and Carson acting as the "spotter."

Nathan in action on the racer.

The boys waiting for us to get the sled unloaded from the trailer and start "racing."

Stinky, poised for the take off.  He always had his toque half covering his eyes and whenever I tried to fix it he would get mad.  The boys also managed to lose all their mitts and although I offered them mine they just wanted to 'race'.

Although there was an outhouse 50 feet away, I looked over to find Nathan watering the snow.  I couldn't get to the camera fast enough to get a picture other than this with him pulling up his pants.  You can tell that this was another warm day as none of the boys were wearing coats.

Our sled is on the left, Clarke is on the rental.  We didn't get any pictures up in the hills this day as it was snowing for much of our ride and you couldn't see much of anything except snow and fog.  Carson was also reluctant to stop for long as he was worried the "Mountain Cat" would get us.  We saw lots of tracks but Clarke was the only one who saw wildlife other than squirrels and deer.

This is where the mountain lion was living, right next door, just before our arrival.

The condo next to us.  There was a mountain lion living under the deck just prior to our arrival.

The view from the our deck.

The row of condos.

Crazy people were out fishing on Salmon Lake as well as Seeley Lake.  There were places where the water was still open!  We had really nice, above freezing, weather the whole time we were there and there were tons of people out on the lakes.