7/18-7/20 Glacier and Waterton National Parks

This is some view to have as you get up in the morning! Our timing in arriving at the the Rising Sun Campground (St. Mary's entrance) left us with a great site. The weather is still warm and there is a haze from the many fires in the U.S. and Canada.



At the top of the Road to the Sun, Logan's Pass, gangs of big horn sheep and mountain goats are in abundance. Here are 13 bachelors hanging out by the path. Click on the picture for details. They were close, very close, to us, and moved up nearer to eat some more wildflowers.


The next day we went to the most popular area, Many Glaciers, because of its vistas, hikes, and wildlife viewing. Most of the hikes were closed, however, because of Grizzlies in the huckleberries next to many of the trails. We got another great campground site and the the temperature finally gets back down into the 80's. Alexa spots a Grizzly and her cub on one of the hillsides.


We got to hike through some ideal forested trails. This was around Swift Current Lake.


Liesl, here is your dad at the end of the trail.


We then slipped over the Canadian Border to Waterton Lakes National Park. (We did go back to St Mary's to get fuel in the US and ate at Elena's recommended Park Cafe. We had the raspberry-cherry pie, and the curried chicken salad sandwich was also great.)

In Waterton, we drove to a beautiful lake (Cameron Lake) along a road that looked like an artist's rendition -- a carpet of wildflowers along each side of the road bordered by thick forest. Of course by the time we thought of getting the camera out, it was too late.



Here is one of the two black bears we saw along the road to our campground in Waterton Lakes Park. He was going for the Saskatoon berries (known as huckleberries on the other side of the border).

We did slip into the famous Prince of Wales hotel in Waterton. We met a couple of characters


who owned an rv like ours (from Redding Calif) and who had just ferried their rig all the way to Alaska and then driven it down to Waterton Lake Parks on their way home. The fellow was 77 and still going strong.

We got a shaky start on Saturday and found that the scenic east west highway is also a major east west route across this part of Canada so I had to drive a lot faster than a scenic highway suggests. We almost saw a great train museum in Cranbrook and almost visited a living village in Steele. Just to show how our luck can change, we are spending the night in Skookumchuck, British Columbia, in a campsite just behind a motel. At least they have internet! We also may have bought fuel for $4.00/gal but we are not sure as we can't figure out the liter to gallon conversion.