Canadian Rockies, Part II

Saturday, August 22^nd  2009, 2325, small dark Lion Lake lake near Hungry Horse Dam, Montana

 We’re back in the USA!  We crossed the border easily, at Roosville, Montana, and I even gave a couple business cards to the US CBP agents.  They loved the camper, and one of them said he’d send my contact info to his brother, an avid world-traveling hunter.  This is a nice quiet 24/7 border crossing, and we’ll likely use it for future trips.

Now we’re parked just south-west of Glacier National Park.  We’ve staged ourselves for a visit tomorrow, but I know there’s a vehicular size limit on the Going to the Sun Highway that runs through the park.  I’m certain we’re over that limit, but we intend to check on it in person on the way by in the morning.

This particular place was marked on the Garmin GPS as “North Lion Lake Campground” but it’s just a gravel lot we passed on the way to Hungry Horse Reservoir, with hopes of finding some related campgrounds there.  We found ‘em, but they were all chock-o-block with campers, so we returned here for the night.  There’s a rock fire ring with some beer cans in it, but nothing else is around.  It is as dark as it gets, too.  The stars are out in force, but no moon.  Without “protection”, I’m wondering about the axe murderers in the area.  This is a prime location to watch “Friday the 13th”. 

 Last night, you know that we also camped late, next to the road in Jasper N.P.  At about 0700, the sun was up and I went out to see just where the heck we had camped.  We were surrounded by mountains, and this is what appeared as the sun shed her light on things.  (I think that’s Snowbird Glacier on Mount Patterson behind the trees.)

 Looking back north on the highway we’d just come down, the gorgeous terrain was just barely visible through the morning fog and fire smoke.  (As best we could tell, there were controlled burns taking place on the road to Red Deer, Alberta.)

We skipped breakfast and headed straight for Lake Louise.  On the way, we stopped at Bow Lake for another photo op.  The glacier you see on the left is Crowfoot Glacier…

 It was a fairly quick drive of maybe 30 minutes to the lake, and we arrived to find a mostly empty RV parking lot with just a few vehicles ahead of us.  We parked in a prime spot for easy departure and then had breakfast, as there was substantial fog in the area.  Walking to Lake Louise would have been pointless.  Around 0800, the fog began to burn off and I walked down to the building crowd of tourists, all with the same delusions of photographic grandeur.  Honestly, it’s not too tough to get a good shot of the lake, and Victoria Glacier in the background…

 As the fog lifted, the tranquility of the near glass-smooth glacial lake was disturbed by canoes.  I snapped this photo just before ripples covered the surface…

Folks were coming in by the hundreds, so Anna and I took Charlis for a hike to Fairview Lookout, an easy 1.6 km up the side of Fairview Mountain.  (Anna may point out that I was covered in sweat near the top…  Too much spam and eggs, I guess.)  From the top, we were rewarded with a nice view of the Fairmont Chateau Lake Louise, which has existed in various forms since the 19th century…

A gracious fellow tourist took a photo for us before we headed back down…

By the time we returned, the RV parking area was full of RV and cars, with many people circling the lot looking for a parking place.  Clearly, the earlier the better!  We’d done well.  We easily exited the lot and headed out for Montana, via Radium Hot Springs.  Charlis was simply exhausted after his little hike.  Anna pointed out that he was pretty excited all day, every day, and not getting his required 20 hours per day of canine dream-time.  She took this through the crawl-through, as we headed south…

Now in Kootenay National Park in British Columbia for the last bit of our Canadian Adventure, we took in the mountains around us, occasionally getting some video footage.    We had to stop after noticing a particularly pretty creek that had been working the rocks for millenia…

Anna suggested we try a tripod-less self portrait with the camcorder’s still function…

And that’s how you’ll remember us if Freddie, Jason, or Michael gets us tonight!

This entry was posted on August 22 2009 at 23:25 and is filed under Alaska 2009. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response or trackback from your own site.