Today started early morning in Calgary Canada, and we swung immediately to Tim Hortons, Of Course! As we well know we have become addicted to this coffee and chain during our short trek across Canada. Nonetheless we hit the road running with intentions to go the Dinosaur Provincial Park about two hours east of the city. The drive was unexpected terrain as we had driven from Banff the day before, being one of the most rugged and massive mountainous mountain landscape on earth, and we drove through a bunch of farm landscape, with open fields, and waving crops. Very beautiful but once again incredibly different from what we have been driving through the previous days. We ended up there around 11am and looked for small hikes as it is a very baron park. The landscape ended up reminding us of the petrified forrest, with huge hardened sand hills from the prehistoric period. These evidently had rendered the largest dinosaur findings in a single area in all of North America. There was a great museum and information area, this was welL worth the 12$ entry fee.
This park is geared towards familys, by having a restaurant and many campsites with facilities for overnight use such as flush toilets and showers. This park is relatively small compared to the national parks in Canada.
Once we finished up here, and took our selfies, we took the early afternoon to slowly head back south towards Waterton Provincial park, which is the backside of Glacier National Park in the USA. This is directly across the border, and in reality part of the same park system and landscape. This drive was similar to the morning drive, though we were heading south through a different road. This landscape was similar, but there were more towns. We passed through a small town for a late lunch by grabbing Mcdonalds.
We arrived at Waterton Provincial Park, by 4:30 with admittedly very little sunlight left….at least for giving us the only time we had to explore the park. This allowed us to explore the most iconic part, and that was the hotel built on the lakeside. This is almost a famous photo amongst the mountain ranges, and lakes, and made for a great place to have an early dinner since we were still hungry. This was perfect since we were hungry enough to split dinner and save costs. The restaurant overlooks the lakes, and many historical figures had stayed at the lodge over time. I was also lucky enough to find a piano in the lobby of the hotel. I ended up playing Game of Thrones themes and everyone in the lobby was applauding. It was a great time! They asked me to stay but we had to be on the move. Ashley bought a ring with blue stone that was famous for the area, and wore it as a souvenir.
We ventured out of the hotel to do a short scenic drive, and short hike, along their red canyon area, which was a small canyon carved from the river, and created a splendid site at evening sunset!
From this we headed back into the US entering into Montana, and finding a campsite within 15 miles of the border. This was perfect as it was cheap, and surrounded with very nice people. This campsite had many pets (cats and dogs) around and was an amazing place to stay as the Indians who ran it had whole resort there to keep people comfortable during their stay. This put us only about 30 minutes from Glacier NP on the west side, which is the area I had not seen and the perfect area for Ashley to hike since she had not seen the area since her surgery held her back.
EXPENSES
8.54 breakfast
12 visitor center fee
8.50 lunch
2.50 coke
32.80 gas
8.77 Mcdonalds
54 dinner
Total 127.11 Canadian
End canadian begin American
16.19 snacks
20 camp
22 beer
Total 58.19
TOTAL CANADIAN PURCHASES 1556.30