Missoula Trip, Day Two

Tuesday morning I got up and made bacon, eggs and sourdough toast on our camp stove. Landon is usually the camp chef, but it bothers me that the girls don't think I know how to cook outdoors. Landon actually doesn't like to cook every single meal when we camp, so it worked out well for both of us.

After breakfast and showers, the kids played at the camp playground. We were there in the middle of the week, so the campground wasn't completely full each night. There were only 3 tent campers, and we were one of them. The rest of the campground was full of RVers, and not a lot of kids, so the girls had the pool and playground to themselves most of the time.
We left our camp site and went looking for Wheat Montana, one of our favorite memories from the Fairmont Hotsprings trip 2 years ago. Back then we went to the original store in Three Forks, MT, but later realized that they have several other locations. We found the one in Missoula and shared a carmel roll and an iced cinnamon roll. Yummy!After Wheat Montana, we went to Splash Montana, the Missoula Parks and Recreation outdoor aquatic facility. It only cost us a total of $18.50 for the 4 of us to spend the day swimming at this super fun pool! The weather was pretty cool and there were dark clouds the whole day, and it actually started raining by the time the girls were done swimming. We got there at 11:30am and left at 3:00pm. Landon was done after about an hour, but I'm a sucker for a lazy river, so I stayed in until 2:30pm.

This is a picture I found online, but this gives you a good idea of the whole layout. We loved the lazy river! It was pretty big, and they provide tubes to ride on, so I spent hours holding onto a tube, being pulled around the river, while the girls rode on top. (I'm not sure why it looks like I have a hump on my back in the following pictures, but I'm pretty sure that I don't in real life.) The other thing the girls loved was the orange slide. The orange slide is the one that you can ride down on a tube. I went down once and thought it was fun, but the girls went over and over in a 2 person tube. They loved it!I love this picture because we coached them to smile when they got to the bottom because Dad was going to take a picture. We also told them to make sure their heads were going opposite directions so we could see both of them smiling. They're trying so hard!
After Splash Montana we were starving! We drove to the Double Front Cafe for their famous fried chicken. My friend Jenny used to live in Missoula and highly recommended this place, so we had to try it out. It was amazing! The best part was watching Lauren dig into her chicken. She loves meat anyway, but she especially loves to gnaw meat off bones. She was almost moaning as she ate.

Next we went to the mall. We are mall-deprived here in Rexburg, so the girls and I love the opportunity to walk around a mall if we get a chance. Montana doesn't have sales tax, so we did spend some money on school clothes at JC Penney, Emma's current favorite clothing store. We also bought some candy at a fun candy store in the mall, and found the coolest oil and vinegar store. You go and mix your choice of flavored oil and flavored vinegar to concoct your own bread dipping oil, salad dressing, marinade, or whatever. We didn't buy anything, but I loved the concept, and the free samples.

Next, we stopped at The Big Dipper, which is a homemade ice cream place. We saw a lot of recommendations online for this place and it didn't disappoint. The ice cream was really creamy and a fun place to stop on our way back to the campground.

Vanilla Reeses:White Mint Oreo:Lemon Sorbet:When we got back to the camp, Emma got into bed and read and played Nintendo DS:

Lauren wanted more water time, so she swam and I read a magazine:When Lauren got out of the water, she ran into Yogi Bear in the campground gift shop:
We were pretty pooped after a long day, so we went to bed pretty early. Unfortunately, our air bed popped around midnight! I'm blaming Landon for the hole. He tosses and turns every 30 second or so, and you just can't do that in an air bed with 2 large people on it who like the bed really firm with air. I think his elbow went through it. So we tried to just sleep on the hard ground, but about an hour later, I realized that those days are over for me. We yanked the full-sized air bed out from under the girls and made them sleep on the ground. While we were moving the girls, Lauren kept saying, "you said you wouldn't do this to us!" It was kind of funny.