As we could now speak Blackfoot (sort of!), the first RV site we had chosen, now we were back in the USA, was on the Blackfoot Reservation and was called Chewing Blackbones (no, not Backbones, but Blackbones, yes, it isn’t a spelling mistake!!).

It was near to a little settlement (too small to be called a village) called Babb, which also had some very old original log cabins still standing in it.

We chose this site for three reasons:

One, it was right on the bank of the Lower St Mary Lake,

Two, it was the first Indian Reservation Campsite we had stopped on,

Three, it was right next door to the Glacier National Park, which we intended to explore for the next few days.

The only downside was that there was no Wi-fi and no telephone signal in the area, which delayed the publishing of the blog for a few days!

The last reason for choosing this site as mentioned above, was more than justified as we explored the Glacier National Park, driving up over Logan’s Pass, crossing the Continental Divide twice, once going to the west of the park and then again as we drove back home (the RV) on the East of the park.

The scenery, was once again, simply stunning, with soaring mountains,

beautiful blue lakes and

loads of Alpine Flowers in bloom.

The evening of the second day, we took a drive into the National Park, up a dead-end road towards an area known as ‘Many Glaciers’, hoping that the crowds of people we had met on the first day, would have gone home in the evening and we would have the place to ourselves – fat chance of that!!

There were numerous trails around the National Park, many steep climbs up the very steep sided mountains with, once again, constant warnings about Bears! – but we weren’t daft enough to do those and we only did the easy ones.

There was still plenty of snow around, but as we were spending most of the time between 8000 and 9000 feet it wasn’t a surprise.

Then, just when we thought we wouldn’t see a Grizzly, there was one as large as life – he was so friendly that we called him ‘William’, what do you think?

Almost everywhere we stopped, there were loads of Ground Squirrels, so busy on the short summer ‘awake’ period (about 3 to 4 months!!), gathering food, ready for their long sleep (8 to 9 months!!), that they ignored the people around and just got on with the job.

 Before far too soon, it was time for us to move on, further south, on our journey back to our US home and our next port of call was at White Sulphur Springs, in the south of Montana, passing through some spectacular scenery once again and the Lewis & Clark national Forest.

The campsite we stopped at, had all sorts of very realistic, wooden models all around the perimeter fence.

We visited the local Hot Springs, from which the town got it’s name and which had been an attraction for visitors since the late 1800’s, ever since the local Indian tribe, who had used them for thousands of years, introduced them to the western settlers.

But we didn’t like the strong Sulphur smell, so we didn’t take a dip in the water!

We will leave you with this sign, which was on the outside of campsite office wall and which we thought was very witty!

More soon!