Where the Green Grass Grows: It Feels Like America, It Just FEELS Different!

Day 9
8 July

Lethbridge Canada to Billings, Montana
6hrs 36 min 406 miles

Today we hit the road to the good ole U S of A! One last stop at Tim Horton's is a must, and this time we we got the box of 50 Timbits because hey, go big or go home right? Well we were doing both today! ;)

We stopped at the welcome center just before the Canadian/American line to see the big dinosaur out front and let the kids play in the rock cut-outs there.

Getting into the US was a breeze. The quote of the day is in the title and comes from my sister in law ;) After 7 days we finally had cell service, although I gotta say it was nice to be cut off from the world for a while. Reminded me of camping trips in Alaska, off the grid and just enjoying being in the moment, doesn't get much better then that.

We stopped at Fudruckers for lunch in Great Falls and ordered elk burgers. It was our first time trying them and they were SO good! Definitely different then cow, but not as game tasting as caribou or moose.

The rest of the day was spend driving to the hotel in Billings. We stayed at the C'mon Inn, and I gotta say, it was the BEST hotel we stayed at the whole trip! This place was awesome! You know how the Doubletree hotels have the room doors facing into the hotel and you can see down into the whole hotel area? This hotel was like that. It had a pool, a kiddie pool, 5 hot tubs, waterfalls, bridges and little ponds with fish in them. The kids were SO excited about the pool they couldn't wait to get down there and swim. We didn't arrive until about 9:00, so were able to get the kids in the pool about 9:30 as it closed at 11. Of course around 10:30, Chase, my newly 4 year old; super tough and fearless child, was running after I told him not to and slipped and hit the back of his head really hard on the tile. We checked and he was bleeding but from what we could tell it wasn't bad enough for stitches. We were mostly worried about internal bleeding and decided that you never mess with a head injury so we took him into the local ER. Thankfully he was acting fine, no vomiting or loss of consciousness so they said they didn't need to scan him, but they looked at the cut and said he did need staples. I was a bit surprised, but after they cleaned it out I could see what they were talking about. He did awesome though, we kept him busy with daddy's phone when the doctor put the staples in. He cried just a min and quickly calmed down. We're pretty sure he's going to be a PJ, spec ops or combat diver one day ;)

Gabriel, Chase and I arrived back at the hotel about 12:30 and got to sleep around 1.

Whew, never a dull moment with our family, thats for sure! ;) Just thankful Chase is going to be ok!

Susan