Welcome to Bear Country

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We left the hotel at 9:30 and instead of going to a local bakery and juice bar for breakfast, we ended up staying at the hotel for their complimentary food. Brianna wanted to go to a used bookstore we saw on the way back from the pub last night and so we stopped off there (books were super cheap!) before going to The Mall.

Our first stop in the mall was the only clothing store we visited. Next we went to the indoor amusement park. Wow. We didn’t go on any rides but we wandered around for awhile and played a few games (Whack-a-mole and a shooting-gallery) and got ripped out of tickets. It’s probably a good thing since we’d just have to cart around whatever we won. Next stop was the Deep-Sea adventures, but the main attraction was closed so all we could see were the sea lions, which were amusing for a time. We only saw the water park from the plexi-glass since neither of us really wanted to get wet, but some of the slides looked wicked. All in all we only ended up spending an hour and a half at the mall which, from what I hear, is some sort of record. I suppose it was our urban nature walk for the day.

Leaving town, we must have crossed the North Saskatchewan River about 5 times. We stopped for gas in Noregg, where a bird got an easy lunch from the bugs on our grille. I’m not sure what type of bird it is but they’re everywhere. We didn’t see too many ‘mountains’ until we left this town, after which point I don’t really have much to say since there isn’t much I can write that would do the Rockies any justice. If you’ve seen them, you know what I’m talking about, and if you haven’t, then you should go on the drive and see for yourself. I won’t butcher it. What I will say is that the colour of the lakes were very interesting. They range from bright blue-green (not like tropical blue-green..it’s more opaque) to deep emerald. We’re thinking it’s simply because they are high in minerals and there probably isn’t much growing in the lighter coloured ones but we could be wrong.

We stopped to see the Spiral Tunnels they constructed for the railways at Kicking Horse Pass but it was raining so we didn’t stop long. We ate dinner at Field, a small tourist town which consists mostly of inns and B&Bs. Overshadowing Field is the Burgess Mountain, from which Burgess Shale is mined (which is absolutely full of fossils). The information centre was closed by the time we got to it so all we saw were some outdoor displays they had up.

The sun was getting a little low (9 o’clock and it was about where it would be at 5-6 in Ottawa) so we were getting a little nervous about where we would stop for the night. Initially, we were thinking about getting a hotel/motel in Golden, but the prices were a bit steep for our budget. We ended up driving through to Glacier National Park, which wasn’t as cold as it sounds, but was extremely pretty and not too busy. We picked a campsite right on the edge of a vigorous stream (which sounded like heavy rain all night) and no matter where you looked a mountain was in sight. The best part: no bugs. Brianna had a bit of a sleepless night at first due to it being bear country, and not just mild-mannered black bears but grizzlies as well. We had no problems though…I imagine bear incursions are pretty rare.

Seen: -Momma bear and 2 cubs
- 1 other black bear
- 3 mountain goats

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