Waterton Lakes Park, Canada

Canada - Part Deux - July 16

Back to Canada, although this time we took the Jeep and crossed at a land border. We had very high hopes of seeing some wildlife on this journey because so far all of it has been hiding from us. Stocking up on diet coke, crackers, cheeses, and vanilla wafers we hit the road taking the part of the loop we didn't take when we went to Going to the Sun. Those roads are US 2 and MT 89. There was road construction but nothing that slowed us down significantly. The roads to the border were beautiful and we saw open range cattle just hanging out on the side of the road eating away. I waved to all of them, but not one waved back! It took us about 2 hours and 45 minutes to get to the Canadian boarder where we went through Customs again successfully but forgot to have our Passports stamped!
 

On the way to Canada

Beautiful trees with white bark. They were my Gigi's (Dad's Mom) favorite trees.

More on the drive to Canada. There were beautiful mountains in the distance.

Here are some of the cows on the road. Hello friends!

More driving. There was a lot of driving on this day, but the views were worth it, and there wasn't much traffic at all. It's great and very safe for the Newell to spend all of its time on the interstate.  However, I am so thankful we have the Jeep so that we can see the back country roads of all of these interesting places in the USA.

Hello Canada. In Alberta everything is posted in both French and English.

This may be one of my favorite shots of the trip. The US and Canada border cut right down the middle. Dad and I had no idea they did that, and it's a great pictures while we were waiting in the customs line. Since we were on the ferry when we went to Canada last week, there was no obvious border in the water. Here, there definitely was!!!

Here we are in our second Canadian Provence, Alberta. Crossing our fingers to see wildlife and lot of it!!!

Once we made it across the border with no problems, the GPS pretty much stopped being helpful. Dad has the Canada roads in there and knows there is plenty of space for them, but she wasn't feeling up to being agreeable. I had a map from the Canada Info Center and we followed the signs about 25 minutes to the Waterton Lakes Park. We paid our $7.80 a piece (because Dad's Senior Pass doesn't work in Canada) and actually followed a Tennessee car into the park. How awesome! Off to the Prince of Wales Hotel we go! After touring around there and taking pictures, we took the Jeep on two roads where we were almost 100%  guaranteed to see some bears. I'll let the pictures explain the rest.

Prince of Wales Hotel





Behind me is the town of Waterton Village - very cute little place with shops, restaurants and places to rent bikes and kayaks

Dad in front of Waterton Lake

Waterton Village

We hung around the Prince of Wales Hotel for a little while and checked out the gift shop where we found this:

Sorry, Becca Green, it was $28.00!!!!!

We went into Waterton Village to see the town and the police building

There are two roads to take to look for wildlife and see parts of the park. One is The Red Rock Canyon Road and the other is Akamina Parkway.

The beautiful deer we saw first.

After we went over both roads without seeing anything, Dad decided to go down this little road that was off the beaten path. Well, what a great idea.

We found our own bears! As we were driving down that little road, there were two right on the side of the road so close to us. I managed to NOT yell (surprising) and say "two bears, we just passed two bears!" By the time Dad backed up, they had gotten back into the woods, but we had them all to ourselves with no "bear jam." FINALLY WILDLIFE!!!!!!!

More bear pictures



Back to America after a great trip to Canada and finally seeing some wildlife.

When we were going back through the customs, everything was going smoothly and then the officer asked me, "ma'am what do you do?" Well, number 1 - I wasn't expecting any questions, let alone be called ma'am and 2 - what do I do?? Ummmm. So I said "I graduated from UT in December and I'm traveling until I need to join the real world." Apparently that was enough to get me through and back to America. A few minutes later Dad quipped up with "You should have told him you were looking for a husband." HA. Too slow. The rest of the way back to the KOA was wonderful, and we actually took a different road back and we were able to avoid all of the construction. I had to remind Dad, though, that we were not in the Ferrari or NSX, but the Jeep. I don't know how much of an effect that had on him, but we arrived at the Newell safe and sound.