Border Patrol

We left Glacier National Park out of the North East exit through the town called St. Mary. After traveling about 45minutes north of St. Mary, we reached the border of the US and Canada. We were stopped at customs by a female guard. I was surprised to see her standing there all alone. She asked us a number of questions including, “ What is your purpose of travel, are you carrying any bear or pepper sprays, how long do you plan on visiting, and are you planning on selling anything in Canada?” The main concern I had had was whether or not our dog Payton would be allowed in the country. We had taken care of getting all of his shots and paperwork up to date before departing. She did not even ask to see a single document! After observing our passports and requesting that we remove our sunglasses, she said, “ Enjoy your trip”.


We stayed the night in Waterton National Park, which is on the Canadian side of the Glacier National Peace Park. We had hoped that our US annual parks pass might work here, but discovered that it did not. Park entry was $7.50 CA dollars per person. This was not bad considering the US parks we had traveled to were each a $25 entry fee if you did not have the Annual Parks Pass. The site was along Waterton Lake with a beautiful view of a street corner on one side with the lake on the other. We were camping in the town site, and it felt like we were camping across the street from someone’s house. The main difference here was that there was actually a town, with local residents inside of the park. In the US, you would have had to have owned the property before it became a National Park, in order to “live” in the park.


After setting up camp, around 7pm Andy went for a short mountain bike ride while I took a SHOWER! It is a good thing that he attached a bear bell to his mountain bike (they suggest doing so anywhere in bear country, as stated in all guide books and publications we have read) because on the descent, he ran into two bears! One was a very large black bear that may have been with its cub a smaller cinnamon colored bear. The bears were 10 yards off the trail. He stopped for a minute, noticed that the road was just ahead, and he decided to go for it. The scary thing is that this part of the trail was only about a quarter mile away from where we would be camping that night.


With the town site so close, we couldn’t resist walking just about 2 blocks away to get a sample of the local ice cream. This was our first encounter with needing Canadian currency to make a purchase. Luckily there was an ATM a couple of shops away, and I was able to use my debit card to withdraw $20. There was of course one of those $2 surcharges, so the withdrawal totaled $22. (I checked my bank statement later and noticed that only $19.80 had been withdrawn American.) It was enough to cover two cones with some extra for coffee in the AM. Never the less, we recorded some outstanding sunset shots of the Rocky Mountains with Waterton Lake in the foreground. After sunset, as I was headed to the bathhouse to brush my teeth, the moon rose above the lake and mountains casting a beautiful reflection on the water. I set up my camera and tripod and bracketed about 10 shots of the scene. The best is posted on the online flickr slideshow!


We checked online and the Canadian dollar is just about equal to one US dollar. This is pretty bad. If you look at the cost of say a magazine or book on the cover it usually shows the price in US dollars and also CAN dollars…as you can see, we are getting ripped off here. Also, gas is sold by the liter, about one third of a gallon, so the price per liter appears to be a good deal at about a dollar fifty. Multiply that by three and there is your approximate price per gallon for gas.


We left Waterton around 10am, and decided to continue on heading north skirting the foothills of the Canadian Rockies. Most of the drive was on highway 22 heading north west toward the city of Calgary. This part of Alberta was breathtaking. We drove through open plains, and rolling hills. The land is dotted with pine trees and groves of birch trees. The land is a deep green. I noticed that the local farmers do not appear to have the immense irrigation systems like they do in Colorado. It seems as if they must get enough rainfall to water the land. I also noticed that in this area, wind energy is a reality. We drove through a couple of large “wind farms” with wind turbines situated along the ridge line just below the foothill range. We passed the Lundbreck, Castle River Wind Farm, Sinnott Wind Farm, Weather Dancer 1 wind farm along this route. We arrived in a town just east of the Brittish Columbia border called Canmore. It is a small mountain town but just miuntes from Banff national park. We are headed to Banff today and will be camping for the next 3 days. We'll check back then!