Big Sky Country

I'm going to bring us all up to date.  I have about 4 -5 posts to go from Portland and Seattle, but yesterday we had such a super day - I've got to get it down!  We've driven from Seattle, Washington, through Idaho and Montana to Calgary, Canada, in 2 days.  Yesterday we drove close to the Rockies all day - and went on a bear hunt in Glacier National Park. 

 Crossing the border from Washington to Montana.  La la la la la! I love mountain country in the summer!

 Glacier National Park - the most geared up national park I've ever seen, (think retail, waffles and ice-cream and hotels),crawling with trail blazers - but it didn't matter because it was so so beautiful and easy and well kept.

 Just sorting out the route for the bear hunt.  (there have a been quite a few Black Bear sightings apparently). 

 This is as close as Al got after 2 hours.

But we did see this lovely deer cruising alongside dozens of loud annoying children - without a care in the world.

Onward with the 'hiking'.  

 Check out the thin waterfalls to the left of the avalanche\snow falls.  Hard to capture - but it really was beautiful - and so accessible unlike at places like Swtzerland where you oftern have to pay to tramp in to see this kind of stuff.  Hang on!  We paid $35 for the car to get into the park.  Worth it.

 And we then started heading down and cruised pararie like country - where the skies were massive.

And passed through a Reservation town where the Black Feet Nation 'were allocated' their land' by the governmnet to settle. They have all their own laws here - no state laws apply. Some federal laws do. We shopped for moccassins and pendalton bags (still haven't picked anything up yet but hope to).  Al checked out the Cowboy gear.

The Black Feet had a special 'meet' on just alongside the Casino that they own and run.

Quite an amazing experience to visit Browning (their town). 

And this is the last of the US  - and the view from the Canadian border, where we were 'detained'  for about 20 minutes (its a pretty remote border with not much on we figured).  As much as feeling like being on an episode of BorderControl was fun - it was kind of annoying to be questionned about what we were up to in Canada.  Its only Canada! And  somehow you feel there should be a Commonwealth brotherhood thing going on - and we also dropped in the earthquake story - but it didn't appear to make the guards rush at all to let us 'pass'. Eventually we did - and hit Canada (to date it appears just like the US, don't tell the Canadians)....I'll  update you on the crazy Canadians once I get to know them.