West Coast -- Glacier, Funpark, Horse ride, and kayaking

Tuesday we had promised to take the girls to the nearby Fun Park. We ended up going there first. We didn't have time to do all the things in the park, but we rode the Go-Karts and played mini-golf. Sierra was nervous at first about the Go-Karts, but she rode with Nana and was assigned to be the photographer. She ended up having a really fun time. Evelyn wanted to go fast, so she opted to ride with Jonathan. Everyone really enjoyed themselves on the ride. Mini-golf was fun, but the girls where sort of phoning it in by the 10th hole or so and we also had a time constraint to get to our horseback ride by a particular time. We sort of "divided and conquered" towards the end with everyone stringing ahead and hitting the balls into the holes as fast as they could. Ev was really hoping to ride the bumper boats, but it turned out to be pretty chilly, so no-one was too keen on getting wet at that point, plus we didn't really have time, so we left that one for a different day. We went straight over to Apgar to do our horseback ride. Right when we arrived to sign in, there was a bit of a kerfuffle with some pack horses in the yard. One of the wooden yolks connecting two of the horses snapped, but the ropes were still connecting the horses, pulling the back of one horse directly against the flank of the other horse. Of course neither of the horses liked this very much, and there was also a third horse that was also tied together with those two. They sort of did a sideways stampede right through the area where we were all standing, and the wranglers there had a bit of a time reining them all back in. That was not exactly the right thing to happen right before our ride because Sierra was already pretty nervous about doing it, and I think she was downright freaked out after seeing all of that. I was nervous myself. However, thankfully none of the horses that we were to ride were involved in the incident, so it turned out not to be an issue at all. Sierra was really scared , but she bucked up her courage, and the wrangler that helped her get to know her horse and mount was absolutely excellent with her and by the time we went out of the corral, I think she was completely sold on the whole experience. She did AWESOME and had a really fun time. My favorite was when, towards the end of the ride, our wrangler turned around and asked if anyone was feeling sore yet. Sierra said, "Well, I do have an itch on my ankle!" :-) Love it! You had to be seven to ride, so Ev and Nana stuck around the corral and got to know the horses while the rest of us went on the ride. Evelyn was completely enamored with the horses and had gone up and down the row petting, kissing, and loving on all the horses that had stayed behind. She could hardly pull herself away from the corral when it was time to go and has been talking about the horses ever since. So cute! After the horses, we went to Apgar village and picnicked with a great view down the length of Lake MacDonald. We were right by the boat rental and by the end of our picnic Sierra had convinced us that we should rent kayaks for a spin. They didn't have enough kayaks, so we ended up with one canoe (me, Bob and Ev), one double kayak (Sierra and Jonathan) and a single kayak (Nana). We paddled around and had a great time and then beached at some point and switched around, ending up with Nana, Bob, and Ev in the canoe, me and Jonathan in the double kayak, and Sierra by herself in the single. She did great, but got tired quickly, so we beached again and Sierra went in the canoe, Ev with Jonathan, and I finished out our ride in the single kayak. At some point Nana realized that Ev didn't have her life jacket on and we realized that we had left it on the beach at one of our stops. I paddled back and sure enough, there it was sitting on the sand. Oops! We had eaten our lunch so late that we were not that hungry in the evening so the girls had left-over chili and we grown-ups had salad..... and watermelon, of course! Then we got all of our things ready for our early morning departure the next day. That night I had a really weird headache in the night which scared the living daylights out of us. It was right on the crown of my head, which felt like a very strange place for a headache. Then when I sat up (in retrospect it was probably just a very major headrush) it felt as though my brains were spilling out of my skull and down the outside. I felt a wave of nausea and had to lie down. I was absolutely freaked out and we almost went to the ER, but after Jonathan did some quick research on the computer and we determined that I was not having some sort of stroke or anything, I just took some Ibuprofen which seemed to do the trick and I went back to sleep. Poor Jonathan was awake most of the rest of the night worrying, though. Especially as part of the aftermath of my head injury several weeks ago, it was pretty concerning, but it hasn't seemed to be anything more major than a normal headache, so we're going to keep watching and hopefully it won't happen again.