Green Ford Provincial Park, AB to St Mary, MT – 185 Miles
We’re back in the U.S. of A. for good; we made our final border crossing this afternoon at the Chief Mountain Port of Entry, just outside the boundaries of Waterton Lakes National Park and Glacier National Park.
The day dawned crystal clear, with not a cloud in the sky. We had a brief shower late yesterday afternoon – not much rain but a lot of thunder – and that really cleared the air. But it doesn’t take much to clear the air up in these parts; I can’t remember seeing even a faint trace of air pollution since we first crossed into Canada seven weeks ago. Haze from moisture in the air, yes; but man-made pollution, no. We were the only ones in this small little Provincial campground last night, so it was almost like boondocking. There was an inn right next to the park, a bed and breakfast sort of place, and yesterday evening as we took a walk after dinner there was a couple from the inn walking along the river behind our camp. They told us there was going to be a charity trail ride there this weekend, and sure enough, as we were eating breakfast this morning the first of the weekend campers rolled in. As we left the campground and drove down to the highway intersection at Longview, a distance of maybe fifteen miles, we passed five or six trucks pulling horse trailers coming in the opposite direction, which we assumed were riders coming up for the charity ride.
At the small village of Longview we turned south on Highway 22 and drove through some of the most beautiful, rolling range land you can imagine – large pastures bounded by strips of aspen and pine forest. The road ran between a range of low hills to the east which were dotted with sharply defined motts of aspens similar to the landscape in South Park, Colorado. To the west was a long line of hogback-type ridges covered with pine, and beyond that the foothills of the higher Rockies. Occasionally there would be a break in the hogback and a valley leading up into the mountains allowing us to see the higher peaks in the distance. The final ten or fifteen miles of this drive took us up on a flat plateau, where there were several big wind generator farms in the distance. We came to a tee-intersection and turned east for four or five miles before turning south again, this time on Highway 6, which leads down to Waterton Lakes National Park, the Canadian part of the twin Peace Parks. I’ve been calling it Waterton National Park in previous posts, but the name is really Waterton Lakes National Park. Just after making this turn back to the south is the small town of Pincher Creek. We had been out of wi-fi range for the past several days, so we stopped at the town library to check our e-mail and upload the previous four days’ worth of blog posts. Many of the campgrounds up here don’t have wi-fi, especially the Provincial and Government campgrounds, but almost every town or village has at least a small library, and these libraries almost universally have free wi-fi. We’ve been staying in a lot of Government and Provincial campgrounds because they’re an inexpensive alternative to commercial RV parks, plus they usually have more natural setting with lovely views, and are much more private and quiet, with campsites that are usually separated by natural landscaping. The downside is that they are almost always dry camps, with no utility hookups at all. Some may have a waste dump, but even those do not always have potable water.
Our plan was to spend one more night in Canada at Waterton Lakes before crossing the border into the U.S. This park is much smaller than Glacier National Park on the U.S. side of the border, and has only three campgrounds suitable for RVs. Two are dry camps, and one has full hookups. We wanted to stay in the full hookup campground because we were running short on water, but for the first time on this entire trip we found the campground full. We hadn’t worried about making a reservation because we haven’t had a problem finding a campsite anywhere for the entire trip. The only exception was at Denali National Park, where I did make an online reservation the night before we arrived. We could have stayed in one of the two dry campgrounds at the park, but we decided instead to go ahead and cross the border and stay in a commercial campground in St Mary, the gateway town to Glacier National Park. Besides needing water, we had almost a week’s worth of laundry to do. When you travel like we are in a small RV, it’s hard to take more than a weeks’ worth of underwear and socks, plus two or three days’ worth of outer garments, so finding a campground with laundry facilities or a laundromat at least once a week is essential.
It looks like we’ll spend at least a couple of days here in Glacier National Park, then head for Missoula where we hope to meet with my friend Ed, who moved up to Montana from Denver about ten years ago. After that, the big decision will be whether or not we want to try to beat all the Labor Day weekend traffic and make a dash for home by the end of next week, or to find some quiet spot and wait out the crowds.
No comments:
Post a Comment