Entering Canada
Monday, August 29th, 2011
Since Glacier National Park is right on the Canadian Boarder and Canada has it's own Waterton Lakes National Park right across the boarder, we decided to plan a couple of days in Canada.
Amy has never been outside the United States and was excited to be able to use her passport for the first time!
We basically had two routes to take into Canada. The Chief Mountain International Highway, or Hwy 89 into Cardston Canada. We decided to head up on Hwy 89 and save the Chief Mountain Highway for the return route. I would later come to regret this decision as we should have taken advantage of the Chief Mountain Highway when the views are clear! More on that later!
Highway 89 passes through some wide-open farm land. Miles of cows and hay bales are pretty much the extent of the scenery until we approached the US/Canadian Boarder, where a few little boarder shops popped up.
Leaving the USA
Waiting in Line at Canadian Customs
The worst part about leaving the USA and visiting a foreign country is Customs! We had to wait almost an hour before we were able to get through.
Amy waiting patiently in our rented Chevy Suburban
A note about our rental vehicle:
We reserved a mid-sized 4WD SUV. We like having the higher ground clearance of an SUV and you never know when 4WD would come in handy. When we went to pick up our Rental Car at the Kalispell, MT airport several days ago, we were informed that they were out of all Small and Mid-Sized SUVs. However, they did offer us a "Free" Upgrade. This "Free" Upgrade ended up costing us about $100.00 in additional gas as it turned out to be a Chevy Suburban. While it offered plenty of room, comfort, and power it only averaged about 12 miles per gallon!
Entering Alberta, Canada
We would be spending the next two nights at a Bed and Breakfast in Mountain View, Canada. But first we wanted to check out the town of Cardston, Canada.
Except for the roadsigns being in Kilometers and gas being sold by the Liter, Cardston didn't look much different than any small mid-western USA town. It is home to the "Largest Carriage Museum in the World"
Jack at the Remington Carriage Museum Sign
The Remington Carriage Museum was closing for the day when we arrived, so we didn't get to visit. However, there was a Carriage on display in the Cardston Visitors Center, which was more than enough for me!
An obligatory Carriage Photo at the Cardston Visitors Center
One of the more photo worthy subjects in Cardston is the Cardston Temple of the Latter Day Saints
The Cardston Temple
After our short visit to Cardston, we made our way west on Canadian Hwy#5 to Mountain View, Canada. There is not much in Mountain View. There is one small store that contains the towns post office, gas station, and general store. They did have some really good ice cream there!
Mountain View is also the location of the Bed and Breakfast we would be staying at.
The "Simply the Best" Bed and Breakfast
I'll go into more detail about the "Simply the Best" Bed and Breakfast in a later post.
Coming up Tomorrow:
Waterton Lakes National Park, Canada
2 comments:
Did you guys stay in one of the Park lodges? I haven't seen anything about that, if you did.
It sucks that we need passports to go to Canada now. When Carole and I went, it was in the days when you could just drive across the border. I recall that the US border guards were a lot friendlier than the Canadian border guards, for some reason. However, some guy on a motorcycle smarted off to the US border guards and for the simple reason that he pissed them off, they took his bike apart. It was lying there all in pieces on the roadside, having been disassembled by the police. Then, we later learned, they made him reassemble it himself.
No we did not stay in any of the park lodges. I wasn't impressed with what you got for the price at any of the in park accommodations.
Plus Glacier is less than half the size as Yellowstone so it didn't seem as critical to stay inside the park. There are also more places to stay just outside the park boundary than there was at Yellowstone.
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