From the Lowe’s of Kalispell, we drove a few miles to an RV shop that had a replacement for our broken leaf spring. I purchased a pair since both sides of the axle should be replaced so that the axle rides level. To remove the leaf spring, I removed the tire, unbolted the axle from the spring, and unbolted the spring from the frame. At last it was out. The gap in the photo below is where the leaf cracked and slid away from the center:
Here’s the RV with the spring removed:
Bolting the new spring in place:
Replacing the tire:
While I was doing this, Trish did our laundry, so we regrouped with clean clothes and a working RV. We drove South through Missoula to Corvallis, Montana to visit Tricia’s Aunt Linda, who lives on a horse farm here. We’re looking forward to spending a few days here before moving on.
Good Shabbos from Corvallis, Montana! See the trip map for today’s drive and our current location.
Happy Anniversary! We left Calgary this morning and drove South towards the US border. The terrain here is flat and planted with vast fields of canola:
After a 30 minute wait in line, we crossed into the US! We enjoyed our two months in Canada and Alaska, but we’re all very happy to be back in the continental US. Continuing South, we arrived at the visitor center for Glacier National Park:
Like our rush through the Canadian Rockies, we would have loved to have spent a couple days in Glacier. We are somewhat pressed for time between now and M’s Bar Mitzvah in mid-September, and wildfires are obscuring the views here anyway, so we didn’t linger. I really wanted to ride the going-to-the-sun road, but there’s nine miles of gravel surface during this phase of road repair, with significant delays to transit, so we will have to tour Glacier in a more in-depth way some other time. The smoke from forest fires in Washington state made it hard to see much of anything:
From higher up, we could look down into Glacier’s glacier carved valleys:
As we drove around the South side of the park, we encountered a train pulling hundreds of tanker cars:
We intended to overnight at the Walmart of Missoula tonight, but I discovered during a bathroom stop that our rear passenger wheel had a broken leaf in its leaf spring, probably caused by the stress brought on by the leaf spring bolt failure we had in Alaska. I pounded the broken leaf back into place, and we drove to the much closer Lowes of Kalispell where we’re staying the night. See the trip map for driving details.
Yesterday was Tisha B’Av, and the fast went as well as could be expected. While it’s obvious driving around in Canada that we’re not in the US, within the synagogue walls there’s no difference between Calgary and any synagogue in the US.
We were supposed to leave Calgary today, but our new friend Gary from the synagogue, who works at the Heritage Park here in Calgary, took us into the park as his guests.
On the way over, we noticed that turn lanes in Canada have two red lights. I’m not sure why:
The first building we visited in the park was a synagogue from the the turn of the century. Like most of the buildings in the park, it was trucked here from another location in Alberta and restored:
This acrylic window allowed us to see the grain scoops moving inside the elevator:
Here the cart is poised to dump its grain into the weighing area before being scooped up into the elevator:
Shave and a haircut, two bits:
Restroom kitsch:
1920s prairie schoolhouse:
In jail:
Harvester:
Another part of the park focused on the fur trade circa 1870:
This fur stamp was used to compress stacks of furs for bundling and shipping to England:
Surveyor’s cabin:
Massive snowplow railcar:
The house of one of the famous five is here as well:
Our last stop was gasoline alley:
I liked the old pumps even more than the cars:
There was a 1950s RV on display:
The heritage museum was fantastic, and we didn’t get back to the RV until 5:15PM, so we decided to stay a third night in Calgary and leave tomorrow morning.
This morning I went for a pre-breakfast ride. Heading East from the RV, I soon climbed 200 vertical feet to cross Sunwapta Pass, then descended 1,800 vertical feet on the far side. Great biking scenery was had throughout:
Of course I had to climb those 1,800 feet back up to the pass, then descended back to the RV. I was ready for breakfast by the time I got back to the RV!
After breakfast, we hiked cross-country towards the Athabasca Glacier:
As we approached the toe of the glacier, we could see that it was covered in glacial debris:
We hiked up onto the glacier for a bit:
The higher we went, the cleaner and more slippery the glacier became:
We carefully climbed down:
Next we drove East to cross over Bow Summit. We hiked out to an overlook for Peyto Lake:
The glacial runoff that feeds this lake is rich with silt that gives the lake its turquoise color:
After Peyto Lake, we continued East out of the park to arrive in Calgary. We’re overnighting in Calgary in the Jewish community tonight and tomorrow night for Tisha B’Av. See the trip map for driving details and our current location.
This morning we headed out from our Shabbosdispersed camping location. It’s called Crown Land here in Canada, and it doesn’t seem to have the same 14 day limits that BLM land has in the US. Some folks live here while working in the nearby oil and gas fields, and some live in town and leave their RVs here and come down for the weekends. We spent some time Saturday night chatting with our neighbors John and Carla around their impressive campfire.
Here’s a view of our corner of the camping area as we left:
We drove South to Grande Cache and stopped at the visitor center. Canadians do love their stick-your-heads-though-the-wall things, we see them all the time up here:
Here is a “Grande Cache”, a large elevated building for keeping a trapper’s furs, food, and equipment high and dry for the winter:
We continued Southwest into Jasper National Park, where we passed some sheep grazing curbside:
There were plenty of great views to be had as we drove on through the park:
Eventually we reached the Columbia Icefield, which is like a giant bowl, spilling ice over its edge to form glaciers as they move downhill into low valleys:
Here the ice pushed out breaks off and falls to the valley floor below. This rim of ice must be at least 100 feet thick:
We are overnighting at the Columbia Icefield parking lot, across from the Athabasca Glacier. It’s $15.70 to park here for the night, but at least we get some great views:
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