Northern Rockies: Day 4
Post date: Oct 10, 2013 2:58:24 AM
The day had come to head up to Canada and use our passports for the second time in the past year. We got a reasonable start to the day and headed off toward Glacier National Park. Like the day before, we drove up and over Logan Pass to St. Mary. From there, we headed north on US-89 before turning west onto Many Glacier Road. Z had never been to Many Glacier and it had been many years since B was there. We fought the brisk wind at Lake Sherburne for a couple of pictures before moving on. The approach to the Many Glacier Hotel is dramatic as you drive over the outlet from Swiftcurrent Lake and look at Grinnell Point towering over the lake to the right and the hotel straight ahead. The public parking lot is behind and above the hotel which upon walking to the top of the hill provides an excellent vantage point. We first walked through the lobby of the hotel to the back deck and spent a bit of time taking pictures from different places before moving down to the lake shore. Back in the hotel, we walked down a hallway decorated with many historic pictures of the area. A few of these demonstrated the extent of glacial retreat that the park has been experiencing over the past century. Some people wonder if the park would need to be renamed once all of the glaciers are gone, but glaciers still sculpted all of the mountains and made Glacier NP what it is today. Obviously the loss of all of the glaciers would be horrible, but renaming the park would be unnecessary.
After leaving the hotel, we drove to the western end of the Many Glacier Road before turning around and heading back out. On the way out we passed by a large group of people obviously drooling at wildlife. We didn't stop (for one there was no room to stop) but noticed a couple of bears feeding across Swiftcurrent Creek from the road. We didn't get a good enough view to see if they were black or grizzly but they were likely grizzlies. Just a little ways further east we noticed more people looking off the road to the north and figured that they had also spotted some wildlife. We quickly pulled over and spotted a couple more bears feeding in the brush just north of the road. We sped off back toward US-89 and followed it all the way to the Piegan-Carway border crossing into Canada. Just south of the border is a small welcome statue for the Blackfeet Indian Reservation with a nice view of Chief Mountain in the distance. After we convinced the customs agent that we were not carrying any firearms and were not visiting Canada for the sole purpose of purchasing marijuana, we were allowed into the country and drove north on AB-2 through what looked strikingly like Montana. We followed AB-2 all the way to High River before stopping for dinner. From High River, we turned onto AB-543 heading west. We then turned north onto AB-22 and followed it north as it zig-zagged its way toward the Trans-Canada highway (CAN-1). The drive was beautiful, passing by gorgeous rural houses and farms with the first glimpses of the Canadian Rockies to the west.
AB-22 intersects with CAN-1 west of Calgary and we followed it all the way into Canmore. Near Kananaskis the highway begins to enter the mountains as it follows the Bow River. The sun was setting but we were able to glimpse what this area had in store for us and we were excited. Canmore sits just outside of Banff National Park, just southeast of the town of Banff and is a bit
cheaper to stay in than Banff. We stayed at the Best Western Plus Pocaterra Inn just off of the highway at the northern end of the town. For many reasons which we'll explain later, this was the perfect choice for us and will most likely be our choice when we are able to make it back to the area. This night we simply checked in and relaxed for the rest of the night in our third floor room directly above our parked car. From our window we saw the silhouettes of the mountains to the north and were excited to see them in the light of the morning.
