Crossing the Border, Riding in Jammers, Driving the Going-to-the-Sun Road and Glacier National Park

Before we get started with today’s adventure, I wanted to share some more photos from yesterday’s fun.

Today, we are off to Glacier National Park. We leave Waterton Lakes about 8:45 and start driving south. At the border we all get off the bus to present our passports to Canadian Border Patrol. Thankfully, there were no wanted criminals or wiseguys in our group and we were cleared to proceed into Montana. On the way to St. Mary’s Lake Visitor Center and lunch, we stop at a site where in one direction you see Flattop Mountain and in the other, Singleshot Mountain where supposedly you can see the outline of St. Mary. I couldn’t, can you? The metal tipis are structures honoring the indigenous tribes. Short stop to stretch the legs and then back on the bus to St. Mary’s Lodge where we will have lunch and pick up our Jammers for the afternoon excursion.

At the restaurant , we met Luis from Brooklyn and Sky from North Carolina as servers for our meal. Luis was funny in recognizing that he’s here in the Rocky Mountains but he’s never been to the Adirondacks or even Letchworth State Park. Sky is having the time of her life but will be returning home at the end of July due to school preparations – she’s sad but also very happy – she desperately misses her cats!!!

At 1:00, we boarded our Jammers – buses from 1936 with open tops and the doors still made out of wood. They’ve been refurbished and are very unique and the “popping up” through the roof when we’ve stopped is really fun! Our driver/guide was Mel – happy to share her knowledge of the area and funny to boot! We embark on the Going-to-the-Sun Road paralleling St. Mary’s Lake which has that incredibly beautiful blue/green color from the glacial silt that gets deposited into it. Our first stop is to see Wild Goose Island and the view is again, spectacular. There was a short discussion over what constitutes an island in Canada – we’re all used to the 1000 Island definition ” it has to stay above water 365 days a year and support at least one tree”. Wild Goose Island has several trees so I guess it’s good!

Proceeding on, we drive past glacier-fed waterfalls, creeks and more spectacular views on our way to Logan’s Pass. Out of the Jammer, up the mountain on a path that leads us to some bighorn sheep! Along the way there was this incredible field of yellow flowers which I found out later were glacier lilies juxtaposed against a snowpack and a mountain of snow and ice. It was really beautiful.

Unfortunately it was really hot – like 95 degrees – and by the time we were driving back down the Going-to-the-Sun Road, we were mostly spent. Back over the border and home to our rooms to figure out dinner and the rest of the evening. After dinner, Rach & the boys decided to rent a pedal-surrey and tire themselves out even more – it did look like fun but I was busy taking pix of two little Bambis! Deer are totally unafraid of humans here and although they’re certainly nothing new to us, you don’t see the fawns so close at home.

Time for a shower and off to sleep. Up and ready to go by 7:00. Tomorrow we visit a cattle ranch and finally get to Banff. I sure hope it lives up to the hype or there’s going to be a lot of disappointed tourists!!