Driving to Glacier National Park | Flathead Lake, cherries 🍒, rental car, & campfire pizza 🍕

after spending a few weeks in washington and making a quick stop in northern idaho we have officially made it to montana with glacial lakes beautiful mountains and cool small towns montana is a state that we have been dying to explore for years and for the next six days we'll be hiking and sightseeing around the beautiful glacier national park one of our top bucket list destinations in the u.s as well as visiting areas lesser known to us trying out a few fun activities and making some furry friends we cannot wait to share the beauty of the treasure state with you welcome to montana [Music] today we are finally driving to glacier national park where we'll spend three full days seeing as much as we possibly can our goal was to visit glacier last year but we took a little too long to finish the van so we only got to spend one day in missoula but while we were there we went to a cool coffee shop checked out a ghost town and ate some really good brazilian food so if you haven't seen that vlog you should definitely go check that one out last night we slept at the walmart ride by flathead lake and today we have a one and a half hour drive to our campsite just outside of glacier we're gonna try to see some beautiful scenery along the way we have a few very important logistics to handle when we get there and we're going to try to make a really delicious campfire dinner and first up we are headed to flathead lake flathead lake is actually the largest natural freshwater lake in the western united states by surface area outside of alaska we didn't realize it but it's actually bigger than lake tahoe even though lake tahoe has more water because it's deeper but it's also one of the cleanest and clearest lakes in the world there are six state parks around flathead lake where you can go swimming or camping as well as an island that you can kayak or boat out to and it costs eight dollars if you're not a montana resident to access the state parks we came to a spot called wayfair state park it's on the northern part of the lake near the town of big fork and we chose it because we hear they had some cool little water access points and there's a quick little trail we can take to get a scenic view [Music] kona learned the other day that she actually likes to swim it was 100 degrees where we were and we were parked by a river so she just went in and she mostly just like drinks and eats the water while she's doggy paddling around but it's so cute [Music] [Music] [Music] freaking loving this lake i don't know if it's the perfect weather or what but it's just so freaking beautiful it's just such a nice day i guess i don't know the water is so clear mountain views mountain views i'm just i'm just happy i don't know i'm just having a really good morning i knew that flathead lake would be beautiful i've seen so many photos of it for years but you always wonder is it actually is like that greenish blue color that you see in all the photos are they just heavily photoshopped well we can tell you guys with our own eyes it is as gorgeous as all the photos i don't know if our camera camera's gonna do it justice but trust us oh it's so pretty yeah i want to come back here and spend a week here or something just here at the lake like a lake house campfire this park is really nice though there's lots of picnic tables at the deuce area they're wide open right now because it's early in the morning but man it'd be cool to get one of those for the day oh this place is incredible [Music] not only is the area known for the lake but it's also known for growing delicious cherries so we're gonna go give them a taste [Music] on the east side of flathead lake there's all kinds of orchards and little stands where you can buy the cherries and we stopped off at big fork orchard and we'll tell you in a second why the cherries are so special here but when we went to go and buy the cherries the owner i guess saw us with the camera and he was like oh go check out the back so we're now walking through the orchard [Music] so the flathead lake area is known for flathead cherries which actually aren't a specific type of cherry but it's a few different varieties that are grown in this area this area is said to produce some of the most delicious juiciest brightest cherries because of the soil and the climate and the really pure water so we got two different varieties we got the lambert and then the van variety and he the owner told us that the lambert type is kind of more what you think of when you think of flathead cherries and they're both like a very like very deep beautiful red color but your window to get them is extremely short so the cherries are harvested from mid-july to mid-august so if you're here during that time you're in luck i love cherries i'm so excited for this so i'm going to try these are the the lamb all right so we'll go for the real deal first they're sweet and juicy a little bit tart these are super good very fresh tasting all right let's go with the van we're in a van these aren't as tart as the uh lambers one they have a little bit of tartness they're not like puckered up but these are just sweet and juicy and super good both of them are just delicious so i have a confession to make i do not remember the last time i've had i had a cherry so growing up i think i tried cherries and i did not like them so i've never had one since i like cherry flavored things but i've never really eaten a cherry so we'll see how this goes that why did i not like these growing up it kind of tastes like a grape to me it's really good it has like the juiciness and the just the freshness of kind of eating just a red grape i i love it i just can't believe i didn't listen out i've been missing out i'm gonna have a really hard time not eating this whole basket right now apparently though it's the mark of uh if you spend a good amount of time here you have red and pink fingers from just eating tons of cherries i'm already getting it i'm gonna try this uh van one that's so good too so delicious i just uh i'm mind blown right now that for my whole life i thought i didn't really like cherries and i love them my world has forever changed so the best part about it though these this was super cheap so it's the both of these were two dollars a pound right so i guess we got two pounds here because we paid four bucks for this whole basket which i feel like at the store would have cost so much oh yeah they're way more expensive at the store we made it to kalispell which is one of the bigger towns on the way to glacier national park and we have a couple errands that we need to run first up get some new bear spray [Music] glacier is home to both grizzly bears and black bears black bears tend to not be very aggressive but grizzlies they can be and if we see one we plan to keep our distance but if we get into a tricky situation we wanted to make sure we had some bear spray it's basically just like intense pepper spray we we have one but we it's been a few years so we think it's kind of expired so we wanted to make sure we get a new one and also make sure we get a holster so that we can keep it handy just in case we need it so if you've watched our vlogs for a while you know that we always have said that we've never seen a bear we've been to a lot of the bare hot spots like banff grand teton yellowstone yosemite a lot of places where everyone sees a bear but we never had until a couple weeks ago but it only really partially counts because i'm the only one that saw it we weren't able to film the actual bear but we did film our reaction afterwards we're driving to where we're gonna sleep for the night we're almost there and we just crossed a bridge and i looked over because there's a river and i want to see the mountain view and everything so i look over and i see something that's black on walking on all fours walking towards the river and i'm 99 sure i just saw my first bear ever and if you all been watching the vlog you know we never we've never seen a bear and we've always wanted to but from the car so we just turned around and we're trying to find it but i think it's gone and adam didn't get to see it i'm really sad yeah we were going across that bridge and i saw a car going really slow opposite us i was like why is this car going so slow and then we crossed and i figured it was just like pretty because the sunset's pretty nice tonight but i didn't see anything dang it i really did not want to experience this without adam so i'm kind of sad i want to like erase the bear from my brain but oh i just saw a bear i'm so excited so while i've now seen a bear we're really hoping that we can see one together this trip but from of course a very safe distance [Music] something that's very good to know about glacier national park especially if you're in a van like us or you have an rv is that for the going to the sun road which is the main road you drive through the park has a length limit of 21 feet bumper to bumper for any vehicle and our van is 22 feet and 10 inches so we missed the cut off and due to kova this year they don't have the shuttles running around the park so we had no option but to rent a car and it definitely made planning this trip logistically a lot more challenging figuring out how we were going to get around definitely made it a lot more expensive but it will definitely be worth it we were going to be in the area we didn't want to miss glacier yet again so we splurged a little bit and i think in the end we'll be happy we did a little bonus though we just rented uh we just reserved a you know a little cheap compact car and i guess they ran out i guess it's hopping for compact cars the glacier area so they gave us a free upgrade we have a giant suv with the third row i don't know what we're gonna do with all this room but we have it yeah party time [Music] so we just completed important task number three which was say goodbye to our sweet little kona bear for a few days as many of you probably know the national parks are not dog friendly minus parking lots and very few select areas and our original plan was just to get an airbnb for the next few days and leave her there but we were kind of worried that we'd be really stressed and worried about her the whole time and have to rush through everything just to get back to her so instead she's going to be staying at columbia mountain kennels which is pretty close to the park and they're going to watch her and she'll have a nice safe place to be and we're going to miss her but to be honest it will be very nice to actually get to enjoy like full days of hiking without having to make sure that she's okay so i think all of our big chores are done now and we're gonna head to our home for the next few days we planned on staying at free spots like we normally do but after seeing how crowded and busy the free camp spots were on the olympic peninsula and also knowing that most of the campgrounds in glacier national park are closed for the season we figured it'd be the best thing to do the less stressful thing is just book an rv park so that we don't have to chase all around trying to find a free spot every night we booked a spot at mountain meadow rv park so that we have a safe space to leave the van at while we're exploring the park they also have showers laundry and they say wi-fi but we have yet to be able to connect to it [Music] we are all settled into our campsite and for dinner we're going to try to make campfire pizza all right we've done a little bit of research so we think we know how to make this happen and hopefully happen successfully so we've oiled the pan with a little bit of olive oil we've cut our dough in two pieces so we're gonna mush the dough into the pan cook it on one side flip it over then put our toppings on and then cover it and then cook it a little bit more the cheese should get all melty the pepperoni should just get all warm and it should just be a delicious pizza i hope so but if we mess up we have a second one this is already not going very well we don't have any flour so we're just trying to quickly mush the dough down a little bit it's gluten-free dough so it's a little different too i don't know about this all right let's see what happens [Music] this is not turning out so well somewhere it's sticking real bad right there this turned into a disaster we didn't promise that the pizza would look pretty it just it'll still probably taste like pizza it might just be the ugliest pizza that's ever existed oh my god disaster absolute disaster so it it has a big hole in the middle so it's kind of like a giant bagel bite it'll still be good it'll still be good we're definitely going to try to do a better job on the second one but we don't want to give up on this one because we need to eat so let's make it you can do it oh my gosh [Music] i can't can you help me she loosened it for me so we're going pretty classic with this pizza we're gonna do some red sauce then we got our cheese [Applause] do some pepperonis and more cheese on top because the more cheese the better we'll see how it goes [Music] i think it's ready all right for the moment of truth we know it looks ugly but does it taste okay has a little bit of a crisp on the bottom a little bit i feel like it might be a little soft but that's not bad soft pizza is okay it tastes like pizza it's a win it's a way it's good it's good it's not like the best pizza i've ever had but considering we just made this over a campfire and we had that whole dough fail i'd say it's not too shabby i'm very excited for this i'm actually pretty impressed it tastes just like you know regular pizza i mean it obviously does because it has all the normal toppings but the crust isn't bad i mean it's kind of it's kind of chewy but it has some crispy parts and considering what it looked like before and the kind of trouble we had doing it it's actually really good like i said i'm pretty impressed all right round two pizza number two this time to prevent the sticking we're gonna put way more oil down there [Music] it's looking so much more promising all around the edges and maybe like halfway into the middle looks and like feels super great nice crisp on the bottom but the dang middle is sticking so bad and i i think because yeah that's what it is it's so thin i made made it two things i'm pushing from the middle out so it's just like sticking too bad and it's just there's a spatula right there but the rest of it man if you can make it more even i'll have to do that next time i think it would it would work out perfect because it's not sticking at all on these edges here another bagel bite yeah so we'll just put all of our toppings and sauce and everything on the on the bagel again but last time we actually like scraped off the stuck-on parts and they were nice and crispy it's actually pretty good so our campfire pizza was a little bit of a fail but hopefully you learned what not to do and yours can be perfect or if you like giant bagel bites you'll actually really love this [Music] oh boy it's been a long day it's been a fun day but it's time for us to hit the hay because we have a big day tomorrow get pumped because tomorrow we are going to glacier [Music] you