Day Six: Browning, Montana

It rained throughout the night, starting just after midnight. It snowed a little bit around 4 a.m. We stayed in our tent until around 9:30 hoping it would clear up a little so we didn't have to pack up in the rain and the 40 degree weather, but that didn't happen.

Our bikes got wet.

And our shoes.

Just as we were almost finished putting everything back in the car, it stopped raining.

However, I didn't want to cook breakfast on a cold, wet grill on the ground.

After being out in the freezing rain for almost an hour, we got showers. Luckily, KOAs generally have nice and clean bathrooms.

Since we didn't cook breakfast, we decided to treat ourselves to Cracker Barrel, located about 5 minutes away from our camp site. It was probably the best meal from Cracker Barrel I have ever had, and I've been to a good amount of Cracker Barrels. We both had the Old Timer's breakfast with scrambled eggs, bacon, hashbrown casserole, grits, biscuits and coffee. Omm nom nommm.

Back on the road, headed toward Glacier National Park. It seems like the higher you go, the bigger the fields are. We've probably seen 50,000 cows just in Montana. They all look like this:

That's a lot of steak out in that pasture!

We saw our first sight of Buffalo today. We also saw a few fields of sheep and llamas. I want a llama. We took the scenic route from Billings to our next destination. There were hardly any cars on the one lane road. We drove mostly on the highway, but there was an occasional town every hundred miles or so. I peed in the woods... next to a Christmas tree. Haha. The towns consisted of run-down train houses, a trailer park or two, tractors, and a gas station attached to some kind of casino and/or a laundry mat.

So, I guess you could say we got gas at a casino...

I saw a trailer with a butterfly painted on the side of it. I'm assuming they either really like butterflies, or they were ecstasy dealers. Probably the drug one, this place was kind of gross. They have painted buffalo in random "popular" areas of the towns, just like how Jacksonville has manatees, turtles and jaguars.

We took the scenic route.

I must have called at least 40 different campgrounds in the Glacier Park area to find a place to stay for the night. Most of the places don't open until May 1st, even KOA. I finally got ahold of someone who said we could camp on their grounds, but they didn't have running water, bathrooms or electricity. Primitive camping? Let's give it a shot. After getting lost twice, we made it to a small town called Browning, Montana around 9 p.m. Adam saw snow for the first time. He made a snow ball...

 ...then threw it at me =( Turd. The road we took to get there was actually closed and blocked off with concrete barriers, but there was no other way, so we risked it. The road wasn't that bad, just a few rocks that had fallen during the winter. There was ice on the sides of the road, but not on the part we needed to drive on. We saw a deer. The campground was called Aspenwood and the owners were super nice with very strong accents. They only charged us $5 to camp. During off-season, they use the campgrounds as their horse field, so they rounded up their 5 horses and locked them up so they wouldn't bother us or kick our tent during the night. There was horse poop everywhere.

They gave us some firewood.

And let their "bear watch dogs" out. This is Samantha:

And Shelly:

Cosmo:

Amber:

And Tucker:

We quickly became friends.

2 of them spent the night with us. We all hung out by the fire, then went to bed.