Jasper National Park, July10

Woke up this morning and headed back up the Icefields Parkway. It was pretty cloudy but started clearing the closer we got to our turn around point yesterday. We watched an interesting film at the Columbia Icefield Interpretative Center and bought tickets to tour the glacier and go to the skywalk. David agreed to go on the skywalk with me, but we were a little disappointed that it was just over a canyon instead of over a glacier like I had thought. Overall we had a really good time on both. The bus drivers were well informed and entertaining, and we would recommend them to anyone coming this way. We are a little surprised that there aren’t many from the U.S. here but there are many from other countries! Lots of languages being spoken and, of course, everything is in English and French.

Uploading pictures for this post has been very frustrating. I'm on my third try and still can't get all the pics on. I'm going to try posting what I have and then see if it will let me go back and edit.

Nice to see some blue skies!

Banff has several of these "animal overpasses". There is so much car and train traffic though here that they have put tall fences on each side of the highway and built these overpasses (and some underpasses) to allow the animals to cross from one side to the other.

One of the many glaciers along the Icefield Parkway

I was able to capture the color of the lakes a little better today.

Clouds, mountains and the gates for closing the highway!

Bridal Veil Falls-seems that there are many across the world with that name.

These pics are of Anthabasca Glacier being fed from the Colombia Icefield. If you look closely at the picture above, the two dots to the left on the glacier are two ice buses. 

This is a straight shot (no zoom) from the visitor's center.

This is using my 30X zoom to see the buses.

And this is what they look like up close. There are supposedly only 23 of these and this company has 22 of them for the glacier tour here. The other one is in Antarctica an belongs to the US Geological Survey team.

We were sitting at the very back.

On the glacier. We have no idea who these kids are. I had just taken a picture of their family for them and the mom offered to take our pic. David invited the kids to join us. They are from Red Deer, AB so are relative locals. 

This is some of the glacier melt.

Banff- July 9

We got in the Jeep this morning to start our exploring, backed up and heard a clicking sound. Looks like the rear passenger side brake caliper decided to give out somewhere in the 1300 miles that we were dragging it up here. We're waiting to get it into a garage and exploring the little town of Lake Louise. The visitor's center has wi-fi, so I'm working on the blog. I'm glad to know that I'll be able to continue posting while we're up here. It takes a long time for the pictures to load so it's not a lot of fun to do several days at a time!
Hopefully we'll be back in commission by this afternoon.

Update, Saturday evening.

Well, I guess I spoke too soon about wanting to sightsee with just the Jeep. The calipers are fine, it’s the axle seal that’s out. And there is no way to get parts until Monday, maybe.

So to make the best of the situation, we took the motorhome exploring this afternoon. We were able to find a place to park it in all the places where we were wanting to stop (but we were purposely trying to stay away from the heaviest crowds).

 The lakes are all a beautiful turquoise color that I can’t seem to capture on my camera. We saw several glaciers and the mountains are majestic.

It started raining pretty good and we couldn’t decide whether to go on hoping it would quit or turn back. We pulled into a rest area to see if we could just wait it out. David read a book and I took a nap. That scenario is so backwards that I’m a little concerned that the world as we know it may be coming to an end…   After about an hour, we decided to head back to camp and try again in the morning. We hope to explore the Icefields Parkway as far towards Jasper as we can get, if the weather holds. There is a glass walkway over one of the glaciers that I’m excited about trying-David is saying “no way” but, we’ll see.

Crowfoot Glacier

Peyto Lake

And then there were the flowers.

Banff National Park!-July 8

Left Great Falls this morning with a little over a hundred miles to get to the Canadian border. We hadn’t gone very far when we gave ourselves a lesson in how to feel like an idiot! We had disposed of all the fresh fruit that we had that might cause a problem crossing the border and we were sure that everything else in the refrigerator would pass inspection. We had been working for several months on getting David’s passport renewed and getting the documentation for having insurance coverage in Canada for both vehicles. We’ve been reading up on the internet to try to be sure that we had everything in place. I started gathering all our paperwork to cross into Canada and realized that the motorhome registration was out of date! WHICH ONE OF US PUT ON THE NEW TAG STICKER BACK IN FEBRUARY AND DIDN’T PUT THE REGISTRATION PAPER IN THE MOTORHOME? I think we are both silently blaming the other, but in fact neither of us can remember putting the sticker on so we don’t know whose fault it is. I thought about double checking before we left home, but I knew the tags were current and the registration papers ALWAYS go in when we put on the sticker…..

After discussing several options, we pulled over in Shelby, about 34 miles from the Canadian check point. It was about 7:30 and we waited until 8:00 and called the Yuma County Clerk’s office to ask if they could email the registration to us. The gal that answered said they could, but it would be sometime after 8:30 as they didn’t open until then. We went into a Best Western and asked if we could use their computer and printer when the email came in. They were very accommodating, let us use their equipment, get coffee, use their restroom, read the paper, and didn’t charge us for anything. We were finally back on the road about 9:30 with all the proper documentation. We pulled up to the port, handed the officer our passports and the vehicle information. He handed back the vehicle information and said just hold on to it for now. He checked the passports, asked where we were going and for how long, asked if we had firearms or ammunition, handed back the passports and told us to have a great visit. HE DIDN’T EVEN LOOK AT ANY OF THE VEHICLE INFORMATION AND APPARENTLY I COULD HAVE STILL HAD THOSE BLUEBERRIES THAT I THREW OUT FOR BREAKFAST IN THE MORNING. But we are safely and legally in Canada.

Waiting our turn to enter Canada

Lots of cool old grain elevators

We drove through a lot of beautiful farm land after we made it through the port. Everything was green and lush. The farms all looked so well cared for and neat. There were many fields solid yellow with some crop. I think it is canola, but I’m not sure why I think so, as I’ve never seen it grown before. Hope to be able to talk to some locals to find out. (I just looked it up now that I have wifi and it is canola)

Nothing makes you smile like a happy barn.

Some one is building a rather large house! You can see one of the two entrance guard houses here with the second hiding behind the mirror. I counted 8 garage doors!

Having everything in kilometers and liters has been interesting. David said he was going to write the Prime Minister and tell him that he wasn’t coming back to Canada until the Prime Minister changed over to miles and gallons. I told him that even though it would take us old folks a while to get used to the metric system, their system makes a lot more sense than ours!

The mountains are beautiful, somehow more rugged looking than the Colorado Rockies. Our campsite is nestled in trees and this evening was lovely. We ate supper outside with no wind and no bugs (well, just a few). It’s interesting how much later it stays light being this much further north. It is 9:30 now and still quite light outside. We’re anxious to get up in the morning and start exploring. It will be fun to be in the Jeep where we don’t need a city block to pull over or an empty parking lot to turn around!

Casper, WY to Great Falls, MT July 7

We got on the road this morning by 5:50am. The drive from Casper to Buffalo was a little over 100 miles and it we wondered about how lonely it would be for the few people who lived along that stretch. There were miles and miles where you didn’t see any houses at all and when you did see one, it was often completely by itself. I would have to be much better prepared to have supplies on hand if I were so far away from any grocery store! We saw a lot of pronghorn antelope along the way, but I didn’t get a pic of them.

We stopped just outside of Harden, MT for some travel information. They had a lovely Big Horn County Museum with a lot of old buildings on some well kept grounds. 

About 2 o’clock, I was feeling road weary and asked David to pull into the little town of Stanford, MT using the excuse that I’d seen a sign for antiques. The antique store was closed, but we found a place to stop and walked across the street to a little deli to get some ice cream. I had my first (of what I hope will be several) huckleberry ice cream cones. The deli was connected to a little shop that had some fun rustic stuff in it. We started visiting with the owner who was laughing that we must be twins separated at birth because we liked the same things. We bought some things and were walking out when David asked me if I’d seen a set of galvanized metal trays. They were overpriced, but I immediately liked them, knew how I would use them and figured if he pointed them out, who was I to say “no”…. We picked them up and headed back to the counter to pay for them. The owner said, “I’m going to give you a deal and you can have them for half price.” David said she didn’t need to do that and she just said, “Well, I’m the owner and I can”. Score! And David got an “Atta Boy!” and “You da MAN!” from me.

The rest of the way into Great Falls was uneventful. Supper and a shower were both welcome and we will be headed to bed shortly. A little over 400 miles tomorrow with the border crossing and we’ll be at Lake Louise Campground in Banff National Park!

Oh, and Christy, I agree with your comment about not wanting to be the child to have to count the revolutions on the wagon wheel ! Can you imagine how that conversation went? 

Dad: We're going to pack up what little will fit into a wagon and travel across country to find a new place to live, so say good bye to all your friends. It's gonna be great! And Susie, your job is going to be to walk beside the wagon (from Missouri to Oregon) and count how many times Mamas hankie comes back to the top.

Susie: I'm gonna what?

Wyoming KNOWS how to do snow fences!

This stretch of Wyoming is majestic, beautiful, vast, desolate, and lonely.

We loved this interesting old truck outside the Big Horn County Museum!

There were some interesting rock formations along one of the back highways that we were on. David pulled over for me to take some pictures and 3 or 4 vehicles passed us including a pick-up pulling a travel trailer. A few miles further down the road we had our excitement for the day when the trailer went off the road, came back on and very nearly flipped both left and right. The driver got it back under control and just kept going. They didn’t even slow their speed! I can’t imagine what the inside of the trailer looked liked. With the way it tipped, there had to be stuff everywhere as well as damage to either the pick-up or trailer where they took out the steel reflector pole!

Truck turned planter in Stanton, MT. I would put this in my front yard in a heartbeat!

Off to Canada

July 6, 2016

Left home this morning in motorhome pulling the Jeep for our next adventure. We're headed to Canada. Banff National Park to be more precise and camping at Lake Louise Campground. We're in a hardsided campers only campground. The pop-ups and other soft sided campers are in a campground with an electric fence around it! We decided to put the hard top on the Jeep before we left. We sure didn't want a bear tearing it up before All-4-Fun!

We drove to Casper, Wyoming today. It got windy this afternoon (it almost always does when we head out in the camper) and we had quite a wind/rain storm after we got to the campground, but that has blown over and it's going to be a beautiful sunset.

Since this was a fairly short day and we got to Casper about 3, we went to the National Historic Trails Interpretive Center. Because just west of here was one of the easiest (relatively speaking!) spots to cross the Rocky Mountains, the Oregon, California, Mormon and Pony Express trails all crossed here. The Center was quite interesting and brought together several of the things that we have done and seen in the past. I've always been fascinated by the thought of traveling across the country by wagon train. I can't imagine the stamina, fortitude, courage, etc. that it took to pack up everything that would fit in a wagon and leave family and friends behind knowing that you would probably never see them again. No phones, no internet, no Facetime or Skype. Pretty much no mail. We did a covered wagon trip out of Scottsbluff several years ago. It was interesting with a lot of history, but pretty lame as for as how realistic it was. we were pretty much along for the ride and all the work was done for us by the guide. We weren't even allowed to help cook over the fire for liability reasons. We've been to Independence Rock and Devils Gap west of here a couple of times. If the folks on the trail made it to Independence Rock by July 4th they knew they were in good shape to make it to their destination before snowfall. They usually rested here for a day and carved their names and the date on the rock. All these things were talked about in the Historic Trails Interpretive Center with lots of hands-on exhibits. It was well worth the time to go through!

This guy was huge! 

David checking out a device on a wagon wheel that counted revolutions to figure out how far you traveled. Something that I'd never heard before was that if they didn't have a device like this, that they would tie a hanky to one of the wheel spokes and have a child walk along beside counting revolutions so that they would know how far they had gone. 

Casper from the Historic Trails Center

Here is David on a tread mill to replicate pulling a hand cart. Many of the Mormons traveled this way with their personal items in the cart and the food for the group carried in a wagon pulled by oxen.

This was really hard!

Pony Express rider and a station below. The riders traveled between 50 and 75 miles each trip, changing horses each 10-12 miles. The Pony Express only operated for 19 months before telegraph took over. 

And then there were wild flowers begging to have their pictures taken!

Lovely clouds along the way (these pictures didn't load the way they were supposed to and I don't know how to move them around!)

Life size sculpture outside the center.