Day 11: Best day so far

July 17th / day 11 

well, today we got to wake up really early, at around 6 am Jessica came to shake up my tent. this was weird because it was the first time that she had to wake me up all week. our first stop was at a wellness center we met Ray antze who was a natural resources director of wildlife and terrestrial. We sat in for a conference about the great things that the center does for the community. He also shared a little bit about himself and what restorations they are working on at the moment. but the exciting part was when we were told that we could come back and swim in the pool.

Shortly after that, we headed off to the Kalispell tribal hatchery where they told us the history of the hatchery and how they have had to change a lot of things because of the invasive northern pike that was illegally introduced.

 The hatchery was originally meant for farming largemouth bass. They showed us around the facility and we got to hold some of the minnow rainbow trout. It was really cool seeing all the fish there in the pool, they had cutthroat, rainbow and bull trout. All of the fish in the facility was being used for research porpuses. Sadly we did not get to meet the professor that was in charge of the research but it was still fun seeing the fish, and not to mention having a composition with rudy and Damaris to see who could hold their hand in cold water the longest.

Rainbow trout minnows. 

We then got to go explore some caves it was really freaky because they were apparently the cave also acts as the burial grounds for women who was crushed by a falling boulder long ago. We slowly made our way to the riverside where we were told a story about the mosquito. after this, we were taken to the powwow grounds to have lunch. It was pretty cool because it was next to the tribe's herd of bison. we got to see some great shots of the bison.

the view from inside a cave. 

A great view

I named him Steve

Later we were taken to learn some of the Spokane tribes language at the language center.  we learned a total of 4 words, we learned " black bear ", " fish", "no", and "yes" that was a really great experience but it was also kind of sad knowing that there were only 4 fluent speakers out of the whole tribe.

After the language center, we left to finally go swimming at the wellness center this was definitely the highlight of the day for everyone. I ran to the workout room with Pablo and we did a quick all body " Bro " workout.

I then was invited to the pool by rudy were we met up with mack and Priscilla. I also got to meet Xavier and Kyle who were warrens mentorees. we got to hang out, go down the slide and play ball tag. It was a lot of fun, afterwords warren invited us for dinner. I was super excited to try the frybread that they had made for us. It was actually my first time trying it and I have to say it was super good I really loved the texture. we hung out for a bit and then we finally got to go to bed. today was a truly long day but it was a lot of fun.