Glacier NP to Osburn, Idaho 07-31-14

We left the Park around 9:30 and headed west on Highway 2.
We followed 2 until we came to 93 where we headed south through Kalispell.

This is the court house in Kalispell.

We drove along the west shore of Flathead Lake. For those who haven’t seen Flathead lake, it is huge with several large islands.

At Elmo we turned south west on Highway 28, which is a scenic route.

  
We finally saw some bears, at least I saw some bears.
A sow and three cubs were standing on their hind legs at the side of the road watching the traffic go by.
By the time I saw them it was too late for Patti to take a picture. It looks like we had to come back to the states to see bears.

A little later we saw a young Moose walking on the road.

 
We drove along the Clarks Fork River.

We saw some guys in drift boats fishing on the river.

We followed Hwy 28 to Plains where got on Hwy 135 and followed the river to St. Regis where we connected with I-90 and turned west.

We stopped At the 50,000 Silver Dollar Restaurant near De Borgia, MT.
Here we filled up the gas and had lunch in the restaurant.

After lunch we continued west to the town of Osburn, Idaho. We stopped for the night at the Blue Anchor RV Park. Here I was finally able to post several days worth of blogs.

Today we are heading for Spokane, WA where we will stop to visit with Shirley and Bill.

Banff to Belleview, Alberta 07-24-14

Okay, I totally messed up the chronology of these last several posts. I hope you can figure out the order because I haven’t been able to change them.

We left the campground at Bow River Wednesday morning and headed south east toward the city of Calgary, Alberta. We came down out of the mountains

and into the foothills of the Rockies’.

We stopped at Cochran, Alberta (a suburb of Calgary) so Suzanne and Roy could get their mail from their daughter, Donna.

We had a late breakfast at a place called Smitty’s. After that we headed west toward the Crow’s Nest Pass.

We drove through rolling green hills.

We passed large fields of yellow flowers (mustard or canola)

and miles of rolling green hay fields.

This farmer must have had a massive ball cap collection.

They went on for about a mile.

We were headed back into the mountains.

Coming through all that farmland we smashed hundreds of bugs on the windshield so some of the pictures are a bit buggy.

We eventually came to the town of Belleview and the community RV park.

We will be here for a few days while we check out some trails off the Crows Nest Pass.

Last night we had a good thunder storm. It started just as we were finished having dinner outside.

It was a long day but now we can stay here for a while.

Happy Birthday Dina!

Four wheeling in the Crows-Nest Pass 07-25-14

Yesterday morning we headed west to the town of Coleman where we topped off the jeeps. On the way we passed through Frank’s Slide. It is a huge rock slide that wiped out an entire town. The only survivor was an infant.

   
From there we got on Kananaskis Rd, which is a wide graded gravel road.

We followed it for a couple of miles until we came to a trail going off to our left up into the forest.

This  trail ended at the edge of a reforestation area. We turned around and went back to the main road.

We found another trail and tried it.

The next trail ended when the foliage closed in on the vehicles.

Back on the main road we continued along the main road. We passed this sign.

Do you know what a Texas gate is? Yeah, that’s right, it is a cattle guard. Go figure.

We continued our drive on the main road until we came to a place where they had freshly oiled the road. We decided that we would turn around here. We had passed an other wide road going off to the west. We followed this road until we found a likely looking trail and turned onto it. This trail was a lot more interesting.

We forded a stream

and climbed a couple of steep grades.

The trail continued through the mountains.

It was very windy. We were looking for a spot out of wind for lunch; unfortunately there weren’t many to choose from.

After lunch we started back toward the main road. Before we went to far it started raining.

On the way back to the RV’s we went through the town of Blairmore.
We stopped at a Home Hardware store where I bought a small gas barbeque.

We fixed a couple of steaks for dinner and took them to Suzanne and Roy’s to eat and play cards.

Today we are going south to Waterton Lakes NP.

Waterton Lakes National Peace Park 07-26-14

We headed east on Canada 3 to Cowley where we turned south on Canada 6 to Waterton Lakes.

Our first stop was Lundbreck Falls.

There was a guy fishing in the pool; you can just see him (lower right). While we were there he caught a nice trout.

You can see another fisherman between the pillars on the left side of this bridge.

We continued our trip east, driving past fields of either mustard or canola and hundreds of wind mills blighting the scenery.

When we got to Cowley we turned south and drove through more rolling farm land with the front range of the Rockies in the background.

Eventually we arrived at Waterton Lakes.

Driving into the park you have a beautiful view of the mountains.

Our first stop in the park was the Prince of Wales Hotel.

  
The lobby of the hotel is pretty impressive.

We wandered around the lobby and gift shop for a while, then we headed to the small community of Waterton Lake.

It was very windy as you can see by the waves on the lake.

On the way to the town we passed this pretty waterfall.

The town is quite picturesque with some really nice homes.

Roy and I went to a coffee shop to wait for the Ladies who were perusing the gift shops.

We left the town heading for Red Rock Canyon enjoying views of the mountains.

Eventually we arrived at Red Rock Canyon.

Patti got this cool picture of the rocks on the bottom of the stream.

We left Red Rock Canyon and drove to a campground near there to find a place out of the wind to have lunch. We went into the campground and drove around for a while until we found an empty spot with a picnic table. We no sooner sat down to have lunch when an RV showed up and the driver informed us that we were in their camp spot.
We picked up our stuff and went in search of another spot for lunch.

While we were looking for an alternate spot we saw a deer walking through the woods.

The spot we found was actually better than the one we had to leave (less wind).

While we were eating, we were visited by one of the few wild creatures we have seen.

After lunch we headed back toward the park entrance. Along the way we saw a sign for the Buffalo Paddock. We turned onto this road and wound around some rolling hills. At first we didn’t see any buffalo but eventually we came to a spot where a few were grazing near the road.

There was one large bull in the group.

From the buffalo paddock we headed for home.
We went to dinner at a place called The Rum Runner. The food was good and the place was jumping.

Today we are going on some jeep trails.