We decide to drive up to Waterton Lake in Alberta for the day.
I book us on the International, with a 10AM departure and a 2:35PM return. The International is an American registered wooden passenger vessel built in 1927 by the Great Northern Railroad company. In the winter they pull it up in Goat Haunt, Montana. It goes on railroad tracks into a boathouse on the American side of the lake.The International is certified for 149 passengers. It makes the seven mile trip from Waterton to Goat Haunt, Montana four times a day.
When we dock in Goat Haunt, two uniformed American customs and border patrol (CBP) agents get off first and check our passports so we can take the hike south to Kootenai Lake.
Before the boat leaves Waterton, we have time for breakfast. I order a Belgian Waffle.
The six mile hike to Kootenai Lake passes some very good moose habitat. I won't lie to you. We didn't see any.
This moose is from another trip....I could almost just start skipping these trips and mail in a report from stock photos....but that would be wrong....
The Prince of Wales lodge in Waterton was also built by the Great Northern Railroad Company....
We're back in Great Falls. The weather is very windy and hot. I've been doing the two hours walks at dawn every morning. Lewis and Clarke came through here over 200 years ago on one of humanities most amazing explorations...what would they think of the place now? We're on the banks of the Missouri River....Lewis and Clarke spent a month portaging around 18 miles of falls and rapids while dealing with huge grizzly bears and rattlesnakes...Many members of the expedition were ill, including Sacagawea
who had been suffering for more than a week from an unknown
sickness. Clark, Charbonneau, Sacagawea and her baby nearly
drowned in a violent storm of torrential rain and huge hailstones.
Friday I walked to downtown Dawson Creek. I think that's about 800 miles north. I saw the Greyhound bus pull in before dawn. It was pulling a big trailer with things people were shipping.. There were a couple of restaurants open for breakfast. Later we drove 400 miles to Red Deer, Alberta.
Saturday we found the Lion's campground on the Red Deer River in Red Deer. I could live there. They have 150 kilometers of parks and walking trails. We bought eight books at the public library which is located in the heart of downtown in a lovely park/flower garden....forgot my camera...
Red Deer was having a Latin Festival on Saturday. We watched the dancing and listened to the music for a couple of hours...they had food from Columbia and Salvador...no camera...
Saturday at dawn I walked my six miles on the banks of the Red Deer. Sunday I went downtown. I met a very disreputable looking character who asked me if I was looking for anything...It was Sunday at 6AM....I think he wanted to give me directions, but I knew where I was....then a kid on a skateboard asked me if I knew where the library was and I gave him explicit directions....
Today I walked around Great Falls....I ended up in a no trespassing area on the railroad tracks and had to climb over a high barbed wire fence to get out...it was that or walk over a long railroad bridge wondering if a train would be coming....
No walking tomorrow...we found a tennis court...Mrs. Phred and I will play tennis and test her broken foot....I smell victory...it's the smell of napalm in the morning....love it...
I bought some size 34 Levi 514s today...The 38s and 40s will go to the homeless shelter back in Sarasota....
The pictures in this blog are not related to the text in any way.....except that they are both mine...
The Prince of Wales Hotel, was the last of the grand lodges built by the Great Northern Railroad and the only one in Canada. The lodge was finished in 1926.
The "men's room" is down a flight of stairs in a small basement area. Apparently this was a common feature of grand old hotels. The Henry B. Plant Hotel in Tampa was finished in 1904 and had the same arrangement. It turned into the University of Tampa in 1932. I taught there long enough to receive tenure in the late 1970s.
The lake is at an altitude of about 4,500 feet. As we look down the lake and eat scones, the view changes from heavy rain to blue sky about once every five minutes. Highly unstable air masses move though the mountains frequently causing winds of 100 MPH. The hotel was blown off it's foundation during construction and had to be winched back on and fastened more securely.
High Tea is served from 2 until 5 PM. Today they have a harpist.
The view from our table looks South over Waterton Lake. The lake was carved out by glaciers and has the typical long and narrow glacial shape, oriented from north to south..The lake is ten miles long. We walked the whole length again a few days ago.
The "tea" includes little sandwiches, bruscetta, scones, strawberry jam, a sweet cream, brownies, cookies, a peach jam thing and little lemon pies.
This is a view of the lobby where the tea is served. We got little square plates about an inch on a side. Mrs. Phred thought that perhaps those were a place to park our teabags. Worked for me.
We see a brown bear on the drive back to the US. Mrs. Phred washed our passports in the washing machine so we were curious to see if they still worked. We got back in with no comment about them.
We walked the ten miles along Waterton Lake about 13 years ago. This time we decide to walk south from the town site of Waterton, Alberta, down to the lonely ranger station at Goat Haunt, U.S.A. and then take the boat back. I tie a bear bell to my right boot.
Right now the average bear is preparing for winter by eating 100,000 berries a day, to take in about 20,000 calories. Rasberry seeds are 70% more likely to germinate after passing though a bear. The whole ten mile trail is solid rasberries, but we leave them all for the bears.
The first five miles are continuously up on tall ridges and back down to the lake. The last five miles, after the international border, are fairly flat. We pass three hikers during the day traveling north.
We run into an inquisitive ground squirrel at a lake campsite, on the Canadian side, after about three miles. He attacks our backpack and Mrs. Phred gives it some cookie bits. At one point he stands on my boot looking for more food. I’m guessing that the four ham sandwiches in the backpack have an irresistible odor to ground squirrels.
We descend to the lake and pass though a thick patch of raspberry bushes. Suddenly we see a black bear in our path less than ten feet away. It runs into the bushes. I can see over the bushes to a rockslide. The bear does not reappear on the rocks, so I know it must be very close.
The bear begins to peek out of the bushes and I snap several pictures. It climbs up on a rock and I recognize the hump that distinguishes a black grizzly from an ordinary black bear. It’s a dismayingly large bear.The bear is only 30 feet away and it advances toward us. I stop taking pictures and start yelling at the bear to go away. The knowledge that my big brain makes me the most dangerous animal on the planet is not all that reassuring just now.
They say to play dead when a bear starts biting you to see if the attack is defensive in nature. After two minutes, if the bear is still biting you, you should fight back because this is an indication of predatory behavior. I make a note to check my watch.
Mrs. Phred picks up a three foot long piece of driftwood and holds it over her head to appear taller. She stands beside me and begins to talk to the bear with that tone of voice that says, “If momma’s not happy, nobody’s happy”. The bear slows his advance.
Mrs. Phred begins to slam her driftwood on a piece of rock and then she leads me in a slow strategic retreat away from the trail to the lakeshore. For a few minutes, after we regain the trail, we look over our shoulders to see if the bear is still following.
At the ranger station they check our passports carefully and stare into our eyes to verify our eye color. Mrs. Phred has to remove her sunglasses. It’s all dead serious. Who knows? It’s only 100 miles of brutal wilderness to the first small town in Glacier National Park. We could have anything in our backpack.
We talk to a young man who just finished walking the 100 miles alone though Glacier. He took seven days. He says he has done the whole Appalachian Trail.
Back in Waterton, I spend my last Canadian Loonies on a bottle of wine, but I'm too tired to drink it.
We start the day by booking a return trip from Goat Haunt, Montana. The boat will pick us up at 8 pm tomorrow. To get there is a fairly serious nine-mile hike over some mean terrain. If we miss the boat it means a night in the wilderness. We have a bear bell.
You have to bring ID to Goat Haunt. Otherwise the rangers send you back to Waterton on the next boat. I wish I had known this before buying the tickets. Being deported for free would be kind of cool.
So then, after making our purchase, it’s on up to a glacial lake. We see mountain goats, wildflowers, rasberries and a moose on a hike around the lake...(Mrs. Phred hastens to add that the moose was not hiking around the lake, we were).
Then back to the lodge for High tea. Or is it Low tea? They serve tea with honey, milk, lemon and sugar cubes. The sandwiches all have the crusts removed: Egg salad, cucumber and smoked salmon with capers. Then there were gooseberries, scones, biscuits and cookies. The top layer was fudge, strawberries dipped in butterscotch frosting and a cute little lemony pastry.
This is a great place for a wedding. In fact, it’s a nice day for a white wedding.
Hey little sister what have you done?…
It’s a nice day for a white wedding.
It’s a nice day to start again.
Then we play tennis after tea. I lose 2-6. I point out that it’s seldom 0-6 0r 1-6 anymore.
My dentist has a picture of Waterton Lake hanging on his wall. I’ve stared at this scene for several eternities while he performs his indignities.
We blew though Jasper and Banff fairly quickly. The temperature was in the low 40s and it rained continuously. We did the obligatory walk around Lake Louise in Banff.
Probably the highlight was a gold crested ground squirrel eating raspberries. I had a couple myself but felt a little guilty raiding the little guys larder.
On the long drive up today, we passed a summit at 7,280 feet. We were in a sleet storm with lightning strikes. The RV transmission felt like it was slipping so I pulled into a rest area.
A man on a Harley was cuddling his schnauzer in the shelter of an outhouse. He was driving from Vancouver to Calgary. The little dog was shivering in the sleet. He had his own seat just in front of the driver.
Later a young man flagged us down. He was driving a jeep. He wasn’t out of gas , but he was afraid that he would run out of gas before the gas station ten miles ahead. Apparently he thought that running out of gas would damage his vehicle. “Son”, I said, “I’ve run out of gas fifty times and it’s never hurt my vehicles.”
But you know youth. They don’t listen to age and wisdom. So I dropped him at the gas station. We both had the feeling that there was something sinister about the boy. Fortunately I more than hold my own with sharks and psychopaths.
So here are in Waterton. Possibly the most lovely place on earth. We want to take the lake boat to Goat Haunt, Montana in the morning and do the fifteen mile hike along the lonely lake shore back to Waterton.
Goat Haunt is a ranger station that can only be reached by the boat or by a fifty mile hike from within Montana.
We went on a hike today. It was raining and 48 F. Actually it was hailing. We could see the hail bounce on the trail.
Jasper is a lovely place. This is high season and the most scenic places are packed with German and Japanese tourists with expensive cameras. I had forgotten that part of visiting the big parks in summer.
There is a chain of spectacular parks heading south on the backbone of the Rocky Mountains: Jasper, Banff, Waterton, Glacier, The Tetons and Yellowstone. We will hit them all and buy the large scale hiking maps and try to avoid the crowds.
After the hike, I went by myself to see the new Simpsons movie in Jasper. There was one line that made me laugh. The village idiot laments, “Once a chicken beat me playing tic-tac-toe.”
That hit home. A chicken beat me playing tic-tac-toe at the Florida State Fair. She beat me soundly at $.25 cents a game. I blew ten dollars. Every game was a loss or a draw. Sometimes good training prevails against a high I.Q.
The chickens have moved to Vegas. Ten dollars now gets you a shot at a $5,000 pay-off. I may drop in for a rematch on the way home.
We’ve been getting e-mail updates on houses for sale in Smith Mountain Lake, Virginia. It’s close to Roanoke which has indoor tennis and three Universities. I think we’re ready to settle down, at least a little. We move south in the morning.
A lady wrote to me today and asked for a full resolution picture of one of my Smith Mountain Lake images. She offered to pay my non-existent Pay Pal account. Funny how an image can come to replace reality. This picture has been featured in Webshots. It's been veiwed over 6,000 times and downloaded 950 times. What do I know? Point. Click.
We went to the West Edmonton mall today. It’s even bigger than the Mall of the Americas in Minneapolis. It is the world’s largest mall.
As we walked in we saw a very large ice skating rink. Other features include a huge indoor water park with extremely tall slides, a sea lion show, a full size floating pirate ship, a rock band, a bunch of live flamingos and an aquarium full of poisonous stonefish. There was also a bungee jumping area and a wing of pubs and restaurants like Hooters and Tony Roma’s ribs. There were at least three multiplex theatres.
The mall also contains a large theme park called Galaxyland. It must be interesting, it costs $30 to enter. One entirely new piece of technology was a large, darkened online gaming establishment with big screen game displays. We walked for three hours and probably saw 30% of the mall.
The picture of Marilyn was in a hologram store. There was also a kangaroo petting zoo and a half-dozen Koalas in a eucalyptus grove. The brace of Pandas in the bamboo forest was also nice touch. We missed the "Sea Cave" section with the Great White Sharks.
