Glacier National Park - East Side, Part 2

Caldwell, ID  September 26


It was getting fairly late when we headed for the border but after dodging a fair number of open range cows in a forested area (Tip, look for cattle poop on the road.  If you see it, be really alert because a cow or cows are close by.) we made it.

Only to wait, and wait, and wait some more.  About 45 minutes of waiting.  This is not a fulltime border crossing but still.  Only one person checking people through for Canada so one vehicle at a time please.  BTW, on the US side they could handle two cars and a truck/RV at one time.

We waited so long, we were taking pictures of birds (these are US Western Jays, BTW).

And trying to figure out if this was Chief Mountain or not.  Note the semi-wild cows.

We don't think it was Chief Mountain but Sofa Mountain.  If anyone knows, please let us know.

Once we got into Canada, we quickly switched to metric (do it fast or you can get a speeding ticket) and we were off.  The mountains on the Canadian side seem to rise out of the prairie.  This was unexpected on our part as we thought the mountains just kept going into the Canadian Rockies.

We saw a sign announcing the turn off to Red Rock Canyon so with our sense of adventure still in tact, took the turn off and headed off through the boondocks.  We hadn't noticed a great number of red rocks anywhere but we got to the parking lot and found a rather small canyon but nice red, rocks:

The stream has cut down through the over burden and exposed a rather pretty layer of red rocks.  What we thought was rather neat was you couldn't keep people out of the water.  Despite cool temperatures a rain showers, everyone (but not us) wanted play in the creek.  It was hard getting pictures without people.

We headed back towards Waterton to get some pictures of the Price of Wales Hotel (built by the Canadian Railroad for tourist purposes).  We got stopped by a bear jam (happens in Canada as well) and we didn't even spot the bear.

Well, the hotel is still standing and rather attractive.  Our Red Bus tour guide told is that is was so windy on the site that the hotel kept blowing down during construction.  I believe it as it was so windy on the point that it was hard to stand to take photos.

And before we started our return journey, a photo looking south down Upper Waterton Lake towards the USA.  

We journeyed back via Going to the Sun Road and wished we were on the Red Bus.  While you can sneak peaks at the scenery, driving the road is pretty much a fulltime job.

This is the last blog in the Glacier National Park series.  We throughly enjoyed the experience and our only regret was that we were unable to enjoy taking some of the hikes into the back country.

We headed back to Missoula to get restocked, enjoy Jim and Mary's RV Park and all of it's flowers, and get the motorhome's annual service.  We started to really like Missoula - especially the Saturday Farmer's Markets and we plan to visit again.