Hello from Waterton Glacier International Peace Park in Southern Alberta!!
We were leaving Moyie Lake Provincial Park, and trying to make as many miles East as we could, when we passed the Frank Slide (tonnes of rubble from a massive mountain slide across the road), and I recalled that Waterton was nearby too. We broke out our trusty CAA travel book, and saw that Waterton is a GEM. After short debate, we decided to try our luck there, and as usual, we ended up with a spot!
We are in the Crandall Lake campground, which is once again unserviced with water, WiFi or electricity, so our "dry-camping" streak continues. We really need a serviced site soon, since while our solar panels give us lights, fans, and occasional cell-phone charging, we don't get enough juice to run the laptop, video-camera and external hard-drives, which we need to pull off all this fantastic Hi-Def video from our flash-cards.
This park is fantastic, and truly a hidden GEM. I had never even heard of Waterton, but it ranks up there with the best parks I've ever seen in North America. The landscape morphs from grassy prairie landscape to chiseled mountains, to lakes, rivers and red-rock canyons, with waterfalls and a vast population of wild-flowers and birds decorating every inch. Every predator native to the region (grizzlies, black bears, cougars, wolves, coyotes, etc) thrives here, and you can't go for long without seeing a bear scoot behind bushes, stroll in front of your car, or as happened to us while kayaking: going for a swim right behind our boats as we passed by at dusk.
We went for perhaps the most perfect bike-ride ever last night. It was pure exhilaration for the soul! We had first done the lung burning trail to Cameron Lake, which featured a cold start to over 100 metres of rocky elevation gain over a short distance. I had to stop several times as my asthma kicked in, and at one point, the right side of my face was twitching in an alarming manner, and naturally, my face had turned bright red... Looking good as always! Anyway, the good part came when heading back down from the lake, where we had to stop twice for quail, once for deer, and it was a thrilling, cooling descent.
At that point, I was warmed up, and wanted to go on, and we headed up the paved roads back toward Red Rock Canyon, where we'd been earlier that day with Dallas in tow. The incline was steady but gradual, and we saw the same vistas as earlier spread out in half-time, adding greatly to each element's aesthetic power and individual beauty. We went until we hit a bear-jam, where a very human-acclimatized mother and her two cubs blocked our progress, so there we turned around to see it all unwind in reverse. It is a vast, multi-coloured, many contoured place, and at dusk, in the softening August light, we found the perfect moment to let it soak into us.
We had no ideas of spending several days here, but it is so far and above more gorgeous than anything else we've seen that we don't want to leave. We've signed up to do a 14km one-way hike (an easy one!!) that crosses the border into Glacier National Park, and offers a relaxing boat-ride back to into our waters that evening. Since that's not until Saturday, it means that there may not be further updates until Sunday/Monday from this happy camper, but rest assured, we're collecting all the pictures and video to eventually package up and offer for your perusal.
In the meantime, we're thinking of you all, and trying our hardest to bring you the world beyond the cubicle walls.
There is now the question of whether to day-trip to the Bar-U ranch, and or Drumheller, but my feeling is that I want to leave some things undone for our next trip, and just experience this place to the utmost. Stay tuned!
