SUMMER VACATION!!!!

Summer Vacation!!!!  I am actually being not lazy and blogging about my awesome vacation to Glacier National Park, Waterton Lakes National Park, and Olympic National Park. 

DAY ONE: (In which the highlight of the day was talking to the cute Canadian customs guy at the border.)

Nothing really exciting on this day.  Antje and I woke up not that early and drove from Bellingham to Pincher Creek, Alberta where we had gotten a hotel.  After all, who wants to set up a tent in the dark?  We drove through Washington, into Idaho, then British Columbia, and finally into Alberta.  Antje spent a lot of time taking pictures out of the car window especially at the two dots of snow she saw on a few mountains and gawking in amazement at the white stuff.  I too might have done some gawking had I not lived away from Arizona but simply told her that wasn’t even enough snow to be considered snow at this point.

DAY TWO: (In which the highlight of the day involved lots of driving and frustration when we learned there were no available campsites at Waterton Park.)

The morning started out fairly decent.  Then we drove into Waterton Lakes National Park (in Alberta, Canada) only to find out that there were no available campsites.  Of course it was Canada Day so every Canadian was off on vacation.  I, in my foresight, had warned Antje that perhaps we should try to reserve something ahead of time.  She in her awesome logic said we were sure to get a campsite if we showed up early enough.  Well we didn’t.  I did much grumbling at that point and then suggested we drive over to Glacier National Park to try camping there.  So we did.  Of course on the way we had to stop at customs when crossing the border.  This was all well and good until they confiscated our apples at the border.  This made me quite indignant as the apples were purchased in the U.S. (at Wally World!) and had never left the car but apparently since they originally came from Chile could not come back in.  Grrr!!  There went my plans to make apple crisp in the Dutch oven.  Luckily, once we arrived in Glacier, we found a good campsite and a lot less people which made it worth all the extra driving. We set up our tent in massive wind which was not so much fun then set off to have some actual fun.

That afternoon we took in the sites along the Going-to-the-Sun Road as far as we could go as half of it was still closed due to snow.  We did a nice afternoon hike along St. Mary Lake which was very pretty. 

Unfortunately, my camera does not do justice to the awesome color of the water here.  It was gorgeous!  This was also the start of all of the signs warning us about grizzly bears and carrying bear spray.  This was posted at every trail head in Glacier, so you couldn't possibly not know there are bears around.

Like the intrepid hikers we are, we packed our bear spray and wandered off into the wilderness.  Sadly, we never saw any bears on the trails although we did see a ton of bear signs (and Antje even took pictures of bear scat.  What I wonder do you do with such pictures?)

Antje got to romp around in the snow which she was very excited about.  Of course, she left 112 degree heat to come to 70-80 degree weather.  However, it was at least 10-20 degrees warmer in Montana than it was in Washington for me, so I felt very hot much of the time.

After a little wandering we came to a pretty waterfall and saw a deer that had absolutely no sense and wandered right up to us.