August 26 - Home Sweet Home!

Well, almost - we're heading back to the lower 48 a little more than 7 weeks after we left it.  Seems longer than that to us.

First though we had to check out the hoodoos just down the road from the camp.

Zooming in on the lower left:

Then it was time to head down the road through Calgary and south.

Didn't stop in Calgary as pulling a big trailer around a city isn't much fun.  It seemed to be a real nice and definitely a high rent district.

Canada's economy is booming right now, especially compared to the US.  They are selling a lot of oil, natural gas, and wood from what we could see, probably most to the US.

And finally - the US border is in sight!

And a long line.  The agent who checked us out was from Michigan, but still no break - he wanted to look around in the trailer.  Didn't take long though and we were on our way.

As we found out later, these "markers" are located anywhere you cross into Blackfeet Indian territory.  The Blackfeet got their name because their moccasins were often black from walking across burned prairies.

A good storm off in the distance, but we missed it.

And settled in at our campsite in St. Mary, Montana, right next to Glacier National Park.  Same place we stayed at 15 years ago!

Tomorrow we'll do some hiking in Glacier.

August 25 - Riding the Icefield Parkway

Another great day for a motorcycle ride.  This time we will ride north from Banff back the way we came.  One road we didn't travel though is the Bow Valley Parkway.  This is a nice slow ride on a smooth road through the woods.  Not far down the road, we came on these bighorn sheep after salt along the road.  Close enough to pet, but no thanks - those horns look mean!

Next we stopped at Johnson Canyon and falls.  There's a lower and upper falls, with the hike to the upper falls being 2.7 km, or a little over 1 and a half miles.

The Upper Falls at the end of the trail.

Back on the road, there were more mountains, glaciers, and blue lakes than we could take pictures of.

At one of the view points, we snacked on some granola bars and it didn't take long for the beggars to show up - a Clark's Nutcracker and a shaggy-looking raven.

Next stop was the Bow Pass Overlook.  A short, but steep, uphill hike to a great view.

Worth another panorama shot.

More road and more mountains.

At our last stop, a little over 90 miles north of Banff, Mistata Canyon.  Here, the river has cut another narrow canyon through the rock.  Again, it's hard to believe a wide river gets squeezed through such a narrow space.

A video might do it justice.

More great views on the way back to Banff.

From our campsite, we can see mountains all around us.

Makes for a great sunset!

Tomorrow, it's south to the border and Glacier National Park.  We'll definitely be glad to get "home" to the lower 48!

August 24 - Moving to Banff

The weather was even nicer today - warmer without hardly a cloud in the sky.  We hooked up the trailer and headed down to Banff, 150 miles south of Jasper.  We even got to see the top of Mount Edith Cavell.  She is a beautiful mountain.

This was our third trip on this part of the road, but could do it ten more times.

We stopped again at the Athabasca Glacier, this time to walk up to the toe of the glacier.  It was a steep hike, and once we got to the top a cold wind was blasting off the ice.

 A quick walk around the loop, and we were ready to get back to the warm truck.

Here's where the glacier extended to in 2000 - global warming at work.

There's our truck and trailer way down there - the little white spot in the middle of the picture.

 We were now on road that was new to us.  Even the view from the gas station was great!

Just north of Banff, we started seeing these overpasses that they've built for wildlife to cross the highway.  The roadside is fenced the whole way so that the caribou, elk, bears, wolves and cougars are funneled to these crossings.  They have set up trail cams to prove they worked, and are now building more overpasses and underpasses for the animals.  Pretty cool.

We set up camp, unloaded the motorcycle, and took a ride into Banff.  This is the high-rent tourist district.  Definitely a nice town that stays busy with tourism year-round.

Here's a view of town from an overlook that goes up to the ski lodge.

We got a kick out of these snowflake decorations.  Looked like they forgot to take them down, but then again there's only 3 months without snow so why bother!