Oh Canada...Eh!!

Today is Friday, Sept 5th. Still staying in the Seattle area tonight. We had a great time today and took in a Mariners / Yankees game tonight.

Saturday, August 30th.

Woke up today after finally getting another really great night of sleep. It pays to stay in a place with electricity to run our heater!! Again, although we were only there for a nights staty, we really enjoyed this RV park just outside of Glacier. It was really nice and clean and had a lot of great amenities such as a TV lounge with WiFi which was heated. They also had very clean bathrooms and showers and a nice laundry facility. Seizing her chance, Bambi got up in the morning and did a couple of loads of laundry. We didn't bring a lot of extra clothes on this trip and I guess we were both digging to the bottom of the barel so it was good to have all clean selections again.

We left the RV park and eaded around the South side of Glacier park. Again, with a trailer, you can not go on the going to the sun road which cuts across the park. So we headed over through East Glacier and stopped for lunch at the Glacier park lodge at the East entrance of the park. This was a nice old place and still has a lot of it's original charm. It just seemed like the kind of place where Roosevelt himself would have stayed after a big game hunt in the park. The grounds here were beautiful and included a golf course and the front yard even had a little miniature golf course and flower gardens as well. The views from the dining room were really spectacular as you could look over at the parks mountain range while eating. Food was good and we were on our way again.

We headed up the East side to a little town called Babb MT where we took a left and headed back into the park to "Many Glaciers" area. As soon as we pulled into the parking lot we could see something was getting people excited. People were all standing in the parking lot of the campground store area and looking up into the mountain with their binoculars and spotting scopes. So naturally, we were curious and walked over for a look ourselves. There up on the mountain, just above the store area was a huge grizzley bear. It was a long way up but a couple let us borrow thier binoculars and you could see him quite easily. Cool to see.

We saw that this trail afforded yet another opportunity to hike up to a mountain lake and see another waterfall. Once we saw that the name of the area was Red Rock Lake and Red Rock Falls, we just couldn't resist. It was a couple of miles hike up the lake but was once again just beautiful. We finally reached the falls and though they were not nearly as tall as the 2000 feet falls we'd seen the day before, they were spectacular none the less. The really cool thing about these was that they had huge rocks and boulders in the river and in the falls. So, if one dared, you could jump from rock to rock and really get up in the falls and experience the place. Of course, we took the challenge and it was fun to get so close where we actually got wet from the mist of the falls.

We checked out the many glacier hotel and took off again.

We were headed to Canada tonight and we needed to get going in order to get through the border and then find a place to sleep for the night so we needed to hit the road.

We finally hit the Canadian border and got checked through with no problem. We were a bit surprised at just how easy it was to go through. We handed the guy our passports and he asked us where we were from and where we were planning on going and why. We told him we were just here on vacation and would be heading toward Banff. He asked us what was in our trailer and we told him that we only had camping gear and our bikes etc. He kind of looked over at it and said "ok". Then he asked us one more question... He asked "When does Canada celebrate the 4th of July?" Now the average tourist may get a bit tripped up on that one but not us...oh no. We said "Canada celebrates the 4th of July.... on July 4th. It just so happens that the US also celebrates their independance on that date." We were glad that we got it right too because I think the penalty for getting it wrong is your choice of a body cavity search or having to join them in a rousing chorus of "Oh Canada."

Ok, so I made that all up. He did ask us though if we were carrying more that $10,000 in cash either US currancy or Canadian? We actually laughed a little when he asked us that because if you know us... we usually have right around $6 cash between the two of us. Besides, we're Dutch... if we had $10,000 in cash, we surely wouldn't be parading it around the country!!

Anyway, we finally found ourselves in the little city of Cardston Alberta. We decided to stop for the night before it got too dark and cold... and besides, we were getting hungry. We were just driving through town when we saw a sign for another RV camp so we pulled in. This place was descent but not anything as nice as what we'd had the night before. We knew we'd been spoiled forever now. But it did have electricity - which we'd be needing tonight as it was going to get very cold again.

We unhooked our trailer there at Lee Creek Campground and headed into town where our AAA book on Canada said to try a little downtown pizza place called "Pizza and Cream." Once again, the AAA book does not lie. It was really great pizza - we talked to the owner and he said that the reason it's so good is that everything is made from scratch right there including the crust and the sauce. His sign self proclaimes it to be the best pizza in the world. Don't know about that, but it was definitely up there alright. The whole experience was fun as the place resembled a 50's diner with juke boxes on the wall at each booth and movie memoriabilia on the walls. They even have a phone on the wall at each booth that rings to the kitchen if you want to "phone" in your order when you're ready. Cardston itself was an interesting little town. It was originally settled by members of the mormon church who fled the US because of their anti-poligamy laws. Here's a question. What the heck does a guy even do with more than one wife anyway... Ok, I get the jokes and all the overtones but seriously??? I can barely hang in there against one wife... can you imagine three? Everytime you'd want something, you'd be outvoted and at the end of the day you'd just have three wives with headaches anyway. No, no... not for me. One wife is more than enough for me.

I just have to add something here. The reason I put "Eh" in the title today is that while I was at Palmer, there were a lot of Canadian students. We made fun of them because they always say "Eh" in a lot of their sentences. Now, apparently the expression "Eh" can mean a variety of things... It can mean, "I didn't hear you", "Do you agree with me", or it can just be a thing that you throw in at any point of the conversation for reasons unknown. Now surely, we thought, not ALL Canadians use this expression right? I'm sure they don't but we were only in that pizza place for about 3 minutes when we heard a conversation between a lady at one table and a guy at the other when the lady asked "So, what's your son doing these days eh?" Bambi and I both heard it and began using it in our own conversation. You should try it sometime eh? I will admit that one of my younger exposures to Canadians was only through the movie strange brew with the McKenzie brothers where they are on a journey to get free beer and end every phrase with eh. They also refer to each other as hoser but we never did hear anyone use that expression... that would have just been awesome though...Eh!

Anyway, we went back to our park where we got to meet our campground hosts. The place was being run by a group of kids (I'll say kids because they're a fair bit younger than me anyway). there was two young guys who appeared to be in charge, but I think they had all their friends over too. It was just fun because Bambi and asked if we could hang out in their office a while to blog and check email which was fun. We got to talking to them and it turns out, during the evening they run this RV park but during the day they are all whitewater river guides. They were kicking back in the office as it was cold outside and they were joking around and making fun of us mostly. We were all having a good time but they were definitely a care-free type of crowd.

We enjoyed hanging out there, but eventually we had to go back to the trailer for the night. It got really cold during the night but our faithful little heater really did the job of keeping us warm and it was greatly appreciated because when we woke up in the early morning, it was near freezing and pouring rain.

I guess God knew we'd had enough of freezing at night and got us to an electric site just in time!!