Waterton, Alberta, Canada To St. Mary, Montana, USA

Wednesday - July 24 - There is a line but nature doesn't really notice it.

Fog masked the spectacular scenery as we got an early start on what promises to be a long day.

This stuffed French Toast (bananas, peanut butter and chocolate) had to be the most decadent breakfast of the trip.

After seeing lots of deer warning signs in the last few weeks, we finally saw some deer. Run, Bambi, run.

Lower Waterton Lake, the one the bear swam across.

Those are elk attached to those velvety antlers. Just down the road a motorist stopped to tell us he had seen a bear cross the road just a ways back. Alas.....we did not see the bear. In fact we didn't see any bears the whole trip!

The fog lifted as we turned south.

Chief Mountain International Highway was at very quiet place a this hour.

Big climb #1 is finally behind us.

That is Lower Waterton Lake from a different angle.

As we crossed the Belly River, hundreds of swallows were whizzing around the bridge. It was Doug's sound of the day only because he couldn't hear the quaking aspen leaves stirring in the slight breeze, Donna's sound of the day.

Up we go again.

We had to ride all the way through Alberta to find a sign that welcomed us to the province, just as we were leaving. (Remember, the road construction had all signs down at the border with British Columbia.)

We had to wait in line as if we were a car but they let both of us go through at the same time. The customs agent asked if we had more than $10,000 with us. Our answer, "We wish!!!" The extent of our loot was one pair of earrings, 5 postcards and lots of pictures and wonderful memories.

This group of friends was headed north to Waterton. They gave us some bananas to add to our lunch....

..... and took a picture for us.

Still going up.

Is it really going down or is it just teasing us?

Yep....it is going down! It is 2:00 and it has only taken us 6 hours to get here.

We still have 20 miles to go but there is a good chunk of downhill. That is Chief Mountain dominating the skyline.

Chief Mountain is slowly receding into the distance. Just after this picture we passed a young man pedaling north. Even though it was late in the day he didn't want to turn around when he found out there wasn't anything in Babb. We gently warned him about the climbing ahead.

The hiker/biker site at St. Mary Campground was "full" but these 3 siblings had no problem letting us pitch our tent too. The woman in the entrance booth said she has never known hikers or bikers refuse to share. With Doug's senior discount and the overflow rate, we paid just $5 for our stay. Sort of balanced out last night's unplanned motel stay!

Just as we got to the restaurant for dinner, the wind from this thunderstorm hit. We were really happy that we weren't still on the road and wondered about the biker we met outside of Babb. We are sure he got drenched. There were also reports of hail from others that arrived at the restaurant by motorcycle.

There were 2 more tents at the site when we returned and all the tents had survived the windstorm.  That made 8 people including us, 4 men and 4 women. All of us sat around the table the rest of the evening sharing tales of our many, varied adventures. The 3 young women had all backpacked the Pacific Crest Trail and it struck Donna that their generation certainly has a different view on limits based on gender. It was wonderful to hear their confidence and that they viewed their female-only adventures in the backcountry as entirely normal and not extraordinary.