Waterton Lakes National Park

Hi Blog!

We're back in the USA! Well, at least for a day or two. We arrived in St. Mary, Montana on Saturday, August 27, 2016. It was one of our longer drives - about six hours. There were lots of up and downs and grades. St. Mary is on the east side of Glacier National Park. We decided to take it easy on Sunday and just go to the Visitor's Center. We got lots of great ideas for hikes in the area.

There are three main attraction in this area we want to visit while we are here - Waterton Lakes National Park (in Canada), Many Glacier, Logan Pass and Two Medicine. We decided to visit Waterton Lakes National Park first, but in order to do the Grinnell Glacier hike in Many Glacier, we had to first stop at the Many Glacier Lodge and pick up our boat tickets for Thursday. On the way back to the parking lot, we had to wait until the train (of horses, that is) passed before we could cross the ridge back to our parking lot:

With tickets in hand, we proceeded to head back North. After crossing the border back into Canada, we stopped at the first viewpoint to look down on our destination - Waterton Lakes. The majestic Rocky Mountains rise suddenly out of the rolling prairies. Amid the peaks are the lakes of Waterton Lakes National Park, carved out of the rock by ancient glaciers.

Waterton Lakes National Park borders Glacier National Park in Montana to the south, together making up the Waterton-Glacier International Peace Park, the first of its kind in the world. We took a few minutes to sit in a pair of red chairs to enjoy the peace and quiet in an otherwise busy park.

There were a number of bear warnings posted around town. While we didn't see any bears, we just realized that there was huge pile of bear scat on the boardwalk in front of us (if you're curious, take a look on the walk by the water between the two wooden posts in the photo above)!  Obviously, this bear had had a large diet of luscious thimbleberries.  More on that subject in the next blog post.

After relaxing from our drive, we stopped in the Visitor's Center to check on any trail closures. We then went over to take a look at the historic Prince of Wales Hotel which overlooks Upper Waterton Lake.

Constructed between 1926 and 1927, the hotel was built by the American Great Northern Railway to lure American tourists north of the border during the prohibition era. The hotel was named after the Prince of Wales (later King Edward VIII), in a transparent attempt to entice him to stay in the hotel on his 1927 Canadian tour, but the Prince stayed at a nearby ranch instead. Too bad, he missed a great view from the front of the hotel.

After checking out the hotel, we drove over to Waterton Village. We walked around the edge of the lake taking in the views and admiring some of the old cottages that dot the shore.

The folks in town have a great view of the Prince of Wales Hotel, which probably couldn't have had a more dramatic setting.

We continued our stroll around the lake in search of more Parks Cananda Red Chairs. When we arrived at the viewpoint, we discovered they were already occupied by our new friends, John and June from Alberta/Yuma. We had a great time comparing notes with them on full-time RVing.

They were kind enough to take our photo.

We probably could have stayed and chatted the rest of the day, but we had miles to go.

More on our next adventure in the next blog.

However, I just had to add a post script to our travels to and from Waterton Lakes. Cows - lots and lot of cows. Montana is open range country. You have to share the road with cows!