Oh, Canada!

Hmmm, where’d we leave off?  Flathead lake it seems, saying good bye to Chrissy and Dave with a case of their yummy beer in back (thanks again!) and a pile of  Glacier Brewery stickers to liberally distribute. We are now official ambassadors!

For those of you keeping track that would have been Sunday August 16. We headed up to Polebridge, MT-almost the end of the road, 24 miles from Canada, but you can’t get there from here. It's on the west side of glacier National Park. Our  only reason for going was because when Chrissy described it, she said the first thing they thought upon seeing the place was how much Jim would love it J And they know him well! It’s a collection of wood cabins on a creek in the mountains, closed off to anyone without a snowmobile or the ability to cross country ski distance for 6 months of the year. When we pulled up to the Polebridge Mercantile (circa 1900) there was a jam band on the stage out back of the bar next door and more than a few folks who looked like, well, our friends. It could have been State Bridge (minus the river and the train). Unfortunately the guy who owns the Northern Lights Bar forgot to renew his liquor license...  oh well, the mercantile sells beer (and REALLY amazing, creative scones,  like feta/olive/onion-we shared 3 for dinner!). That night we camped at the most beautiful river rock beach ever!  EVER! Greens and purples and red and grays and browns, smooth and lovely.  We wandered about for several hours before dark (have we mentioned it gets dark late here?)  finding  6 or 7 LOVErock sets almost without trying. It was so amazing, peaceful and hard to leave…..

But we did, and spent the next day driving around Glacier (being too long for the Going-to–the-Sun road) but happy as there was no traffic and spectacular views of mountains and forest (some of which had burned in the past couple years, leading to a cool, unexpected way of seeing the landscape and crazy amounts of wildflowers).  We took a much needed hike around Two Medicines lake, almost seeing a moose and perhaps several beavers (their home was in evidence) before heading up to Many Glaciers campground, where we were turned away(!) for having arrived so much later than all the other campers. Oh well. The drive was glorious, heading into the valley between spectacular, sharp cut mountains along a green/blue cascading river of glacial runoff as storm clouds gathered around the peaks.

So into Canada we went on Tuesday, without so much as a “we’ll be searching your trailer now”, and up through Glacier/Waterton International Peace Park (which Glacier National Park evolved into in 1932 celebrating the longest ‘undefended’ border in the world). It was a gentle transition into this new world, still espresso shops all along the way (I forgot to mention that Montana has the most coffee huts per capita of anywhere on earth, much to my delight), Safeways, Walmarts and Home Depots. What they did have which we’d never seen before, was a town (Frank) that was covered in rocks (big rocks) after the side of a mountain gave way. Devastating, of course, but so amazing, too. Perhaps Mother Nature's way of protesting all the mining going on around there.

Next day we made our way up to Banff National park, hiking around Lake Louise and up toward the glacier that feeds it. This is a place I remember visiting as a kid. We were loving the clear blue water and the beautiful forest that surrounds it rising up, seemly straight up in places, to cover the mountains. 

The road running through Banff and into Jasper is counted as “one of the ten most beautiful drives in the world” and we believe it! Cruising along between the majestic peaks is pretty amazing, but then you start getting to the glaciers and Oh my! Just incredible walls of ice and snow hanging off sculpted peaks. They figure every person in North America could stand together on the Columbia icefield and still have room. Wow!  Lakes and rivers of unbelievable blue and green (and sometimes white) runoff carving rock canyons like I’ve never seen. Panther falls (unmarked, which we found only though because a kind someone encouraged us to follow a trail off a turn out) jumps straight out of a hole in the side of the mountain after winding it’s way through deep carved rock channels up above! It’s ridiculous, really. And based on Janet and Karl’s word, we ain’t seen nothing yet! :-)