Well we have been having some issues with our car battery; we have needed a few jumps since the beginning of the trip. We aren’t sure if the issues stem from using the booster in the car to plug in our laptop, phone, and camera battery and all this. In any case we had the car jumped the day before by the park ranger since it wouldn’t start and decided that today we were going to change the battery. The last thing we would need is to have the car not start when we are in the middle of nowhere with no signal on the phone. So the ranger told us that the nearest service place was about 45 minutes away in Browning, which happens to be right in the middle of the Blackfeet Indian Reservation. So we headed out early the next day (Saturday). Arriving in Browning there weren’t too many options so we found a Napa Auto Parts and decided that it couldn’t be that hard to change the battery ourselves. So we went in and immediately felt like lost tourists. Everyone here knew each other and though it isn’t what I would expect of an Indian Reservation. However, there were some lingering signs that these were Blackfeet Indians like most of the men had long braided hair with bright threads. The people were very nice here. They didn’t have the exact battery for our car so he came out to measure to see if a different one would fit in and even gave us the tools we needed, helping us the whole time to replace it. They were really cool. So we headed out with our new battery. We wanted to find a local place to have lunch but the one diner that the guy had suggested was not open. So we drove around but there was nothing else but a burger place. So we ended up going to the Taco Bell of the west – Taco Johns. It wasn’t really great but it was enough. There was a museum on the Plains Indians but we were ready to head back to get in a hike during the day. It was kind of sad to see Browning because it was so impoverished. We had learned from the visitor’s center at Glacier that the Blackfeet Indians used to live in the lands that now make up Glacier National Park. They had signed a treaty in 1895 to sell the lands to the government thinking that they were just giving up the rights to mine in the mountains when in fact they sold all the land that now makes up Glacier for 1.5 million dollars. After they lost this land then they were pushed out and no longer had the rights to live off this land causing serious survivor issues for the people. So the only right they have now is to get into the park for free. So now they live in small run down cities like Browning, earning their money by working in construction primarily within the park.
Well when we got back from Browning we set out to do a hike right next to the campground up to Okotami Lake. This was a 5 mile hike to the lake so we set out to just do a portion since we didn’t have time to go all the way there and back before nightfall. This was a tough walk for me because I was insanely sore from the climb up the Loop trail the day before. We headed back not too late, had dinner, and stopped by to see Martin, Ni, and the kids that we had met yesterday.
We sat and chatted by the fireside for awhile while the kids played. It was fun and interesting to hear about Martin’s travels in Thailand. Elisabeth and Anda became good friends but unfortunately they were leaving the next day, surprisingly we would run into them again when we got to our next campground in Many Glacier. The next day was our last day in Rising Sun Campground. We took the shuttle up to Avalanche Creek which was closer to the west side of the park, it was quite a ways getting out there, over an hour and a half. We had lunch along the creek before heading to the hike. This was one of the most crowded trails we had done since it was right next to a campground and relatively flat making it more accessible to people. It was very different from the landscapes on the east side of the park since it was a cedar and hemlock forest. It was very beautiful with the big cedars towering above. This led out to Avalanche lake surrounded in mountains with at least 6 waterfalls tumbling down the mountainsides. It was a nice spot but since there were so many people it made it less enjoyable than the other hikes that we had done. So we headed back admiring the gorge along the way.
(This is a picture of a glacier, you can tell because the surface reflects the sunlight)
Since we had a long commute back to the campsite in the shuttle then we got an early start back. That night we met a couple in the site next to us when they came over to ask to borrow a can opener. We ended up staying up late drinking wine and chatting about our adventures traveling through the parks. They were both registered nurses and using the freedom offered by this type of profession to travel. They worked for a company that moved them around the country on missions of two to three months. They are originally from Michigan but had lived in Phoenix and now are living in Seattle. They loved living in Seattle but said that they really fell in love with Portland since it is like Seattle on a smaller scale. They had lots of nice advice to give us on traveling in Arizona and in Seattle. They were very cool and we had a great time until we were told to be quiet by the people in the tent next door....Then we went to bed.
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