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:
The kids worked on the Junior Ranger program here:
And received their badges:
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.
Congrats on reaching the 1-year mark.
Is the location of M’s big day public info?
It’s going to be in Las Vegas.