Yeah man! It's only an hour drive. I'd go every weekend I have off if I were feeling well. I've heard of Flathead Lake! Isn't it that clear because it's so acidic? I may be thinking of another one. I want to visit Montana sometime, it's only a few hours South. :) 

I hope you get a chance to go, too! I see people from around the world there all the time, and it's super close to Calgary so it's not far after a plane flight. :D

I have seen the Martian, but I've loooong held those views about Mars. Lots of respect to anyone willing to go knowing they'll never come back to Earth  and what they'll have to endure, but I literally couldn't imagine moving there. Apparently they think that the first few missions are very likely to have pretty much 100% fatality rates because of how lethal the environment is and the fact that there's no real proper medical facilities. The problem with terraforming is it would take literally tens of thousands of years to make the air breathable. Mars does have an atmosphere, just its composition isn't sustainable to life as we know it. Apparently it used to be a lot like Earth... as was Venus until it had an environmental catastrophe that gave it runaway greenhouse gas effects and turned it into a giant pressure cooker.

Creepy squid demon beasts are my biffles, ruuuuuuuuude! Haha, but yeah, I absolutely love ammolite. I have a raw chunk of it on my mantle place.


o.o And I thought I was at a high elevation. I'm at 3800 feet and I'm in the Rocky Mountain foothills. 

I used to have a cactus (I should elaborate, never saw one in the wild), and it had like soft fuzzy bristles that were like a brush. I gave it pats all the time. >_>