Day 86: Canmore, AB to Waterton Parks, AB, Can

Monday, July 25, 2016
Division No. 3, Alberta, Canada
Up at 9am this am to get in one last look at the river. Fishermen rowing quietly by proved to be a great photo op. Then on the road at 11am to Calgary and Costco. Pulled in with perfect timing for gas refill - excited to see gas was $2.55/gal and we made 10 mpg for the last 2 tanks!! But, sorry, no black rice here either! But Sara got her dog food refill and we picked up some ribs and sugar snap peas for our dinner tonight. Back on the road, now driving through farm country, BIG farms. And we started to notice miles of brilliant yellow fields - closer exam showed they were small shrubs with yellow flowers, but en masse, they were a sea of flourescent yellow! We started googling and had narrowed it down to mustard plants or canola, but had to stop in Claresholm at the Visitor Center to ask and eat our lunch. Turns out they are Canola plants, apparently patented in Canada, hence the "Can" stands for Canada, and "ola" for oil - they say the canola oil from Alberta, Canada is distinctive, maybe like Vidalia onions from Vidalia, GA! But just a little trivia for your next game! Then on to Waterton Lakes National Park, which is Canada's side of Glacier National Park. We had heard it was even more spectacular than US Glacier Park, so thought we would check it out on the way back. We arrived about 6pm and thought campsites would not be as hard to find here since not so many crowds. But, wrong on that issue. It doesn't look as crowded in the park, but they only have 3 campgrounds on site and they were all full. But we drove in and followed the road to Red Rock Canyon. It was a nice hike up to the waterfalls and the rock is a distinctive pink/purple/red color as compared to Arizona's orange/red rocks. I'm afraid we have been saturated with beauty, though, because it just couldn't compare to our recent scenery. But we did see deer and 2 bears on the drive out of the park (it was near sunset). Then we had to drive towards the next town to try to find a campground at 8pm. Fortunately, there was a very nice one on the way to Pincher Creek - more expensive than we planned for a site with no hookups, but a short drive from the park, and available! And they let you run generators til 10:30pm so we could still get dinner cooked before "quiet time". Bow River was a great campground last night, but our site was very close to the highway, and we heard traffic all night so it will be very peaceful here tonight. And, we have an interpretive nature trail to check out in the morning! We will be crossing into Montana tomorrow, so need to spend some time plotting our route back to Ohio!
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