We had a great day in Glacier. It rained on and off, but we still saw a lot of things. Mike and Si saw a Black Bear pretty close to the road, and later saw a mama Grizzly and 2 cubs - there are some great pics, but I'll wait til we're sharing Mike's pictures. We saw some beautiful waterfalls, too. It's really lovely with all the mountains and fields and wildlife.



When we left Glacier we drove Southeast through Montana and made our way slowly through the state. We found some cool roadside historical markers from Lewis and Clark's expedition, and we passed a lot of ranches. This is really amazing country! We've seen so many pronghorn antelope and mule deer that we barely even mention them anymore!



We winded our way down to Bozeman, Montana. Montana Univ. has the Museum of the Rockies, curated by Jack Horner, and we wanted to see what dinos they had there. This pic was taken out front. The steel cast was made from the fossil named Big Mike, one of the most complete T Rexes ever found or something. We saw the real fossils inside. They also had a great exhibit of Leonardo DaVinci's machines with life-size models made of wood that you could (often) touch and work. It was very cool!

Outside of Bozeman is National Bridge State Monument, which we visited. The water was running so strong and fast it was nearly deafening! You can see the river disappear underground and then come pouring back out. Cool!





This park was really well designed, too, because the whole area was wheelchair accessible, which made it easily walkable even for someone like me with bad joints, etc.






Bozeman is really small town, but they do have a really nice restaurant! The Grand Hotel had excellent food, including buffalo steaks and elk. We all had an truly delicious meal (even if I did eat too much!)

We left Bozeman and drove about 1.5 more hours to Columbus, MT to spend the night.


After spending the night in a cheap place along the road, we went to Little Bighorn National Battlefield. This ranger was a great storyteller and told the riveting story of how the battle went down, and he pointed out exactly where everything happened. Very interesting. We drove around a bit to see the smaller markers where the soldiers and native warriors fell, and then we moved on. Tonight we are in Sundance, WY. The rain has come in full force since about 1, so we're going to bed early and hoping for some breaks in the bad weather over the next couple of days so we can get some good pics in the Black Hills around the monuments!

Ta-ta for now!

Believe it or not, the internet connection here is even whonkier than at our last place! I'll have to wait at least one more day before another big post. Suffice to say all is well, Mike and Si saw bears in the wild yesterday, we've had a good day today and we're in Columbus, MT for the night. Tired but doing well. :-)

I promised you last night that I would get around to sharing yesterday's adventures with you, and I don't want to break my promise! We woke up fairly early yesterday after a great night in the Driftwood Motel in Waterton National Park, Alberta, Canada. See the red awning in the pic? That is the entrance to our hotel. It was clean and very comfortable and one of the most reasonably priced places we've found so far.

Yesterday morning was full of fog and clouds and more rain, but Mike was up before Si and I and went outside to get some pictures. He managed to find this beautiful rainbow, and take a few other amazing shots. Like most of our days in the Rockies, it was very chilly, and it rained on and off all day.

We found a beautiful frozen lake . . . partially frozen, really. It was COLD! up there!

We had a lovely hamburger picnic for Second Breakfast - yum!

Then we drove up and down the mountain roads in the park VERY slowly, looking for wildlife. We spotted this moose right near the road, munching on bushes and leaves. He was big, and he didn't seem to care about the cars going by. Simon even got some movie footage, but we'll wait til we're home for that project. (Oh wait, maybe this was in Glacier and not Waterton)

We didn't have to look far for the Bighorn Sheep, as they were right near in the town in Waterton. They are obviously shedding their winter coats and looking rather bedraggled. I must admit that I was inclined to try to collect some of that wool and get it spun into yarn, but Simon reminded me that those sheep are most likely dangerous, not to mention protected by law, and I don't want to be knitting unlawful scarves and hats!

And speaking of the law . . . . we crossed back into the US around 1:00 or so yesterday afternoon. (I have to say the border gate is a really boring picture!) We had our passports ready for them and so on, and they opened our van and looked into our coolers and asked us questions. They seemed to ask Mike a lot of extra questions, though. Then they asked us to park and asked Mike (only Mike) to come inside. He was apparently going to be undergoing further questioning. According to Mike, there is another person with his exact name who is wanted for murder in Atlanta, GA. When the border guards looked up the file and picture, though, one guy said "Uh, I don't think this is the guy. The guy who's wanted is 6' tall, weighs 122, and is black." One of the other guards said "Well, you've been a better sport about this than most people we bring in for questioning. Thank you for playing!" Mike said it was a little nerve-wracking, but it sure makes for an interesting story! I guess that's what you get when you have such a common name! I figure since we didn't have to give them any money and Mike didn't have to be stripp-searched, it's no harm/no foul.

So we've made it to Glacier National Park. Yesterday and this morning we've been exploring, driving around, looking for wildlife. We did see some Mountain Goats way way up on the mountain through our telescope - that was really cool! It is beautiful here, and we've seen some spectacular waterfalls, but the main road, the Going-to-the-Sun road, is still closed in the middle portion because of weather. Sigh. Mike and Si are still out exploring this afternoon, and I am using this as some quiet time for myself. I do love them, but a.) this altitude is hard for me to deal with and b.) they're wearing me out and c.) we're doing so much chatting in the van I can't get my naps in!

Ok - some quick stats before we sign off. As of 2:00 this afternoon (Mountain Time):

• we'd hit 3005 miles on the trip odometer
• Mike has seen 30 new life birds
• we've seen 22 interesting new mammals
• we haven't had to call home for more money (which is a good thing because honestly, I don't know who we'd call! LOL
• we've seen license places from all US states except for, I think, 4 of them (Hawaii, Delaware, Connecticutt and Vermont are the only ones I can remember)
• we have gotten no traffic violations or any other arrests (although apparently there was a close call at the border! yipes!)
• stuff we've forgotten in hotel rooms: bottle of shampoo (big deal), Simon's retainers (ugh)

More later!

The internet connection is very slow today - I'll do an update as soon as we find a speedier connection, or when I'm feeling more patient.

This morning we woke up in Banff and drove around some more. There are several long back roads through the valley where wildlife is often spotted. It was very cloudy and we couldn't see much of the mountains around us, but we did have fun going around some more. Simon saw a red fox, which I think was our only new mammal in Banff.



Mike was still snapping lots of pictures, though, so we saw a lot of that! LOL It was raining on and off, so some of our pictures from today in Banff are drizzly. Well, the pictures I took are drizzly . . . Mike's are probably all still gorgeous.






Oh, and isn't the waterfall pretty?








When we left Banff, we headed south towards Waterton National Park. We decided to take a side trip to Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump. The name drew us in, but the views and the history were very cool. It's a museum dedicated to the First Nations and the buffalo hunting. We met a guide named Edwin Small-legs who was very friendly and we had a good talk with him.

We saw some ermines and marmots at Head-Smashed-In, and also some great views of the prairies.
The tipis you see are a group campsite they have. The woman who checked us in said that a group of students was staying the night there tonight.

We've made it to Waterton, and it is, indeed, lovely. We're all exhausted, though, so info on Waterton is going to have to wait til tomorrow. Maybe I'll be able to post before we're on the road again. This should be our last night in Canada. It's been fun, but it will be good to get back to more reasonable gas prices (and other prices, too, we hope!)

Money

I have money envy. We're staying in Banff at the moment, so you might think I just wish we were rich . . . and although that does have a certain appeal, that's not the goal in my life (obviously) and it's not at all what I'm talking about.

I'm talking about pretty money. Canadian currency is really pretty! The bills are all colorful, and each one has a metallic strip that's really shiny. They're just beautiful bills!

And what do we have? Dead presidents and mostly green. Our most recent bills have some color and some more style (not all completely centered, etc), so that helps, but US currency just isn't as nice as Canadian. 4 of the 5 bills shown here feature dead white guys, but the 20 has Queen Elizabeth. Lovely!

Another thing I admire about Canadian currency is that there is no dollar bill. They've gotten rid of paper singles and are using all coins. They even have a 2 dollar coin, which is very neat. They call the 1 dollars "Loonies" because they have a loon on them. The 2 dollar coins are called "Toonies" for obvious reasons. See what I mean? They even have cute names for their money!

Today we are heading back into the US. We're going to take our time traveling South, though, so we can see more of the Rockies. If we have Wifi tonight, I'll post again!

I will quote my dear husband, who said this afternoon "Wow, I think this is the best day I've had in my life, since . . . . well . . . since yesterday!" We left Drumheller this morning and drove around Calgary and up into Banff. Banff is one of those rare places on earth were you can literally drive down the road and stick your camera out the window, randomly snapping pictures, and come up with amazing shots.

The weather guys were predicting rain on and off all day today. While there was some rain early in the day, by the time we really reached the mountains the sun was peeking out and we had some lovely views. Seriously beautiful views.

We stopped in Canmore first, on the way to Banff, and found a little yarn shop called Knit and Caboodle. I found a very friendly knitter/owner, and some great yarn! I only bought a few skeins, but it is Alberta-made wool, hand-dyed and everything. Yay! One ironic tidbit is that the owner is heading to Columbus, OH this coming weekend for the big TNNA trade show! How funny is that? She goes to Cbus every year. Of course, she FLIES like a sane person.




So we got to Banff, drove around the town a little, and then headed to the Gondola. This is a suspended cable car that runs up to the peak of Sulphur Mountain. I didn't take a picture on the way because I was doing deep breathing and trying not to yak. LOL The peak, though, was beautiful (of course - I've totally run out of adjectives, haven't I?). I made Si pose with me for a pic.



Mike saw 3 new life birds just on that gondola trip - 2 of them in the same tree at the peak! In the tree he saw Clark's Nutcracker and the Grey Jay, on the way down he found the 3-toed Woodpecker. We also saw some more ground squirrels - a different species than we'd previously seen, and new chipmunks!




After all of that, we drove along the #1 Highway up through the National Park and saw a lot more wildlife. There are a lot of pull-offs for people who want to view nature, and Si and Mike did a bit of extra walking.
Mike was taking many pictures (over 1000 just today!) and Simon was looking for animals.



Si saw a Grizzly Bear, a Brown Bear, they both saw beaver, and a wolf, and all three of us saw Big Horn Sheep, Mule Deer and Elk.