Day 12 ~ Sunday, June 14 - Hello Sunday! We are in Fish Creek Campground in Glacier National Park, Montana. Today will be our third day here. We found out that there are no church services in the amphitheater until next month. Bummer. The non-denom services are conducted by the Christian Ministries in the National Park. But, later in the day we found out that they had services at 5:00pm and we showed up about 5:45pm after our park excursions and just had a bit of time to talk to the two young christian college kids that were running the show. He was from Grand Rapids, Michigan, and she was from Georgia. We wished them well.
Sunday was spent in heaven, well close to it. We drove up past Lake McDonald and up the "Going to the Sun" road to Logan's Pass. There's a visitors center up at the pass which was not open for the season yet; next week. Rats! The two-mile long hiking trail out to most beautiful spot in the world (my opinion, of course) was impassable for us. It was pretty much buried in snow. Rats, again! We were all looking forward to the hike to visit Hidden Lake.
Of course, the 20-mile drive up and then back was the highlight of our stay here. Absolutely breathtaking around every bend in the road and there are a lot of bends in the road. Enjoy our pictures.
On the right - A waterfall that feeds the river. One of the red limos from McDonald Lodge.
Just a bit of snow ahead. Oh, January in the mountains.
We love this place!
We headed back down to Fish Creek Campground for dinner and a good night's sleep, after a nightcap of course.
Day 13 ~ Monday, June 15 - We just farted around today, enjoying a beautiful sunny morning. I sat in the sun playing Spider on my tablet while Diane worked for Mercury Storage. It took a bit of time to work out different bugs in the computer setup, but all went well for her. Gregg worked on a bad battery issue in the motorhome; I helped and together we determined that the battery needs to be replaced. Gale read a book and tried to stay warm in the sun; I think it worked.
Diane's work was done by mid-afternoon so we traveled all the way to West Glacier, about 3 miles, to mail post cards and leave some money in the local stores. It was time for ice cream, beef jerky and a sit on the bench in front of the store relaxing and killing time, vacation style. This is great!
This store has deli camping and meat supplies. Or am I reading this wrong?
We visited the train station at the park's entrance and were fortunate to be there when a really long four-engine freight train rolled into the station very quietly and came to a stop. They had to do train things, I guess. A lot of the cars were decorated with graffiti. Cool. I took a lot of pictures because I love trains.
Then back to the campground to run the generators again to charge the batteries and most importantly, recharge the coolness in our refrigerator. They allow running generators from 8 to 10am, noon to 2pm and 5 to 7pm. It's a good schedule.
We ate a nice supper, played a couple games of cribbage, drank a nice alcoholic beverage, wrote up this stuff in the log and then quit for the day. Great camping! Good night.
It is 53 degrees outside at 11:00pm mountain time.
Day 14 ~ Tuesday, June 16 - So sorry to leave this place, we headed out of Glacier National Park today, going back east to East Glacier and then north towards Canada. It's north of the border here, not south like in Detroit. Our first stop on US2 was in Essex at Walton RR station and hotel. Really cool place with a nice, real train display. You can rent a train car to sleep in as well as a room in the Walton Hotel or one of the cabins. Pricey, but very cool.
After a pretty good dinner at the Park Cafe, we drove across the highway to Johnson's of St. Mary Campground and RV Park. The office was closed and we had to find our own campsite. No big deal. The campsites were okay, but the restroom facilities were a little questionable. They offered pay showers using their proprietary tokens, which we didn't have because the office was closed. Stupid idea. Why not just use quarters? Well, it's just for one night and we won't be back, ever.
It is a chilly 46 degrees outside at 11:30pm.
Day 15 ~ Wednesday, June 17 - We got an early start today and headed north on US-89 toward Canada. It's all about the journey getting there. We still had to get past Glacier National Park. The weather started out very nice with some blue skies and deteriorated as the day went on. Just a bit of rain here and there with the clouds hanging low, low, low all around the mountains. The visibility was not so good as you can see in the photos.
Heading northward outside the park on US-89, we hung a left onto a smaller road going back into the park. We drove about 12 miles west to Many Glaciers Hotel located on a small lake. The 12 mile stretch of road was rough going most of the way. The trailer was a bouncin' and the motorhome was a swayin' and with no music. The winters here are hard and the roads suffer. We think we have problems in Michigan. The rough ride was well worth it. The hotel is really cool.
We didn't spend a lot of time at Many Glaciers Hotel and hit the road again on our way up to Canada. The weather was not so nice with a drizzly rain. There's really no traffic as we drove east out of the park back to US-89 and headed north to highway 17 which took us back into the park for a short drive to our first Canadian border crossing. We shot a bunch of cool pictures all along the way.
This is favorite picture of mine.
Well, we are in Alberta, Canada, and off to see the wizard or maybe Waterton Park, our first major stop north of the border. We drove northwest up highway 6 and hung a left onto highway 5 down to Waterton. It was a nice scenic drive in the drizzly rain. We drove thru Waterton Park downtown and straight into the Townsite Campground in Waterton Lakes National Park and secured a campsite for the night. Now we could go site seeing for the rest of the day. The town of Waterton Park and the Prince of Wales Hotel were our closest targets, so off we go.
The bears are wood and the people are real. Hi Gregg and Gale!
I just have to write more about this Canadian campground. You can't skateboard or roller blade on the roads; they're gravel and pretty smooth. The pads are level; easy to do. The restrooms look simple on the outside, but are large inside and will rival Michigan State Parks newer buildings. The showers and stalls are very spacious and there are four sinks on a nice granite countertop. The whole inside is immaculately clean right to the edges on the floors. The clean-up guys do a great job.
There are several shelters open on one side with picnic tables and a grill. The double stainless steel sinks with matching counters sits close to our site and is waiting for campers with dirty dishes. Outdoor kitchen sinks! Great, and they get used.
This campground sits right on the lake with the mountains in the background. What a view. There is a really nice walking trail/path right off the shoreline for a stroll with the deer that seem to think this campground is theirs. I think they are on site 103 and the coyote is on 102. Yes, there was a coyote here in late afternoon.
It is a 55 degrees outside at 9:30pm.
Day 16 ~ Thursday, June 18 - Here we are in Waterton National Park, Alberta, Canada, for the second day. The weather is better this morning with hazy sunshine and in the sixties. A good day for touring the park; and what a lovely park it is. We visited some waterfalls, again, looked at the mountains (can't miss 'em), shot some bears with the cameras. We killed the whole day and came back to town and ate on the patio of a very nice restaurant. Pizza. We walked down the street a hundred meters and had black raspberry and thimbleberry frozen yogurt for dessert. This was truly a good vacation day. Enjoy the pix.
We understand this is a good bear viewing trail.
Yes, I was doing a lot of zooming with the telephoto lens.
Day 17 ~ Friday, June 19 - We woke up to the nicest weather; sunny and close to 70 degrees, but (there's always a but) it got real windy. There were white caps on the lake. We had to take our game of cribbage inside to finish. Diane won, again. She's on a winning streak.
We packed everything up and left town. Drove north, bought our first tank of overpriced Canadian gas (115.9 cents per litre), and headed toward Banff, 200 or 300 miles or kilometers or whatever number of football fields (the official US unit of measurement). Anywho, it'll take us the better part of a day to get there. But, once again, it's the journey, not the destination that counts right now. This stretch of highway is absolutely beautiful with a mix of cattle ranches, farms, mountains on the left (west) and small rivers. We were looking for wild animals and only saw cattle and horses. This is big business up here. Americans don't think about all the cattle that is raised in Canada. We just eat it and hope it didn't come from China.
How exciting! Diane was thrilled. Washing dishes is much easier.
This campground isn't as nice as Townsite in Waterton Park. There's about 600 campsites here. The restrooms are okay; clean and much older looking with only a single shower per building. There are a lot of buildings and many of the trailers have full-hookups going and the campers are probably using their own facilities.
We drove around in circles in downtown Banff. What a tourist town. Lots of stores that looked dangerously expensive, so we stayed in the truck and drove to Bow Falls which is very close to downtown Banff. The locals are so lucky to have this gem in their backyard.
It is a 53 degrees outside at 10:15pm mountain time.
Day 18 ~ Saturday, June 20 - We stayed in Banff National Park, Alberta, Canada, all day. We enjoyed the sunny, warm 53 degree weather first thing in the morning. It's Saturday so my beard got a trimming; a weekly thing ya know. I refilled the 7-day pill container for the upcoming week. Just trying to survive here in the wilderness. At the end of the month we'll all go down to the river to bathe and clean out the cracks.
BTW: We are in Tunnel Mountain Campground, Banff National Park, Alberta, Canada.
We drove back to downtown Banff (about a mile) and the ladies visited the Tourist Info place for more better directions to some local attractions that we wanted to see. No waterfalls today, just a stinky hot springs and cave called "Cave and Basin". It's a big Canadian environmental thing with the hot springs. Tiny endangered snails live in the warm water that smells like a nasty fart (sulphur gas). So no one can even touch the water because it will upset the snails feelings and they might croak. Funny, because in the early 1900's, this place was a giant hot tub loaded with tourists soaking their cares away. Times have changed. The snails won.
Banff is a really spectacular place where one could spend a bunch of time walking around enjoying the river front, spending big bucks in the stores and restaurants, check out all the local nature stuff and simply relax. We'll be leaving tomorrow, Sunday, and push onward, north to Alaska and all that. But, for now, we head on back to our Tunnel Mountain Campground campsite for dinner and sleepy time.
Day 18 Summary ~ We drove about 10 miles today
which puts us at 2819 total miles into our journey.
It is a 46 degrees outside at 11:00pm mountain (Alberta) time.