A Day in Waterton Lakes Canada & back to Glacier

Day 12 Waterton Lakes NP, Canada back to Glacier NP, U.S.A.

With wifi available in our room, we decided to abuse it to get our blogs done and up on the net. We scooted out right at the 10:30a checkout time, loaded the car, garnered some ice for the cooler and drove to Cameron Falls located just outside of the shopping district.  We were greeted by an unafraid chipmunk who came within inches of our feet and stood up as if begging for a handout. We had parked the car in the park at the falls and, after photographing these beautiful falls and the cute reception committee, we headed to do some shopping!

The town is small but has some cute shops. We were looking for Christmas ornaments that would say Waterton on them but be locally made. No luck. All of them were “made in China” and we refused to buy them.  The next shop connected by a hallway had a beautiful Native mask  and I inquired. She said it had been hanging there so long that it had become a permanent fixture. I offered her 20% less and she agreed to sell it. I couldn’t resist it for my dining room wall with my Alaska mask and was pleased to find out that it was signed by the artist. I picked up a couple more postcards to send to Sophia and Hailey so the clerk gave them to me for free since I was buying the mask. Trying to keep from coming home with Canadian currency, I found some notepads for the kids that are made from recycled moose poop called PooPooPaper and bought two stamps for the cards to be able to charge it all. I’m sure my boys will love the gesture.   ;-0  The cards are in the mail and I hope the girls enjoy getting mail.

After all of our shopping and wandering into 8 different stores, I informed her that any more would put me into overload and she would have to press on without me. I’d sit myself somewhere in the shade and wait. The last store finished her pocketbook too so we went looking for the walking trail next to Waterton Lake to take it back to the car at the falls at the far end of town.  I had forgotten to take my hat and didn’t put sunscreen on either since this was supposed to be a shopping day. So I was a little worried about getting a sunburn and tried to walk from shade spot to shade spot.

It’s a quaint town and the multitude of hanging flower baskets are evidence of the people welcoming spring after a long cold winter. Although the car temp stated 81 degrees, the lack of humidity made it comfortable. I shouldn’t have worn my jeans today but the morning was supposed to be 48! We had spent 4 hours walking around town and the trail. We were ready to head for the good ol’ U.S. of A.

We walked into Waterton’s cute “opera house” which doubles as a bar and restaurant and took some photos of the double begonias (or at least that’s what I think they are!). Two entertainers from the Teenie Weenie Theatre were carrying their large puppets and talking to people on the street to encourage a good crowd of audience members for their little kids’ production at 3:00p. The young lady had been a voice major but is now undecided.  One thing she has made her mind up about is getting married this year and the major will come later. The gregarious young man IS a theatre major and obviously loves what he does. As they walked away, a doe sauntered across the street and proceeded to eat the begonia flowers until a resident started laying on his car horn to scare her off.

But not before we got some cute photos. On our walk along the lake, we saw another doe laying down in someone’s backyard fast asleep and not even moving when people passed by or stopped to photograph her. Warning signs were posted to remind humans that deer can be dangerous if approached.

We got some nice photos of the Prince of Wales Hotel atop a high hill and drove up to it for better pictures only to discover that it looked like it was made of cardboard up close…and cheap cardboard to boot! No photos.

We left Waterton and decided to drive through the Bison Paddock one more time. It wasn’t much but we got a few more pictures. (Like we really NEEDED more pictures!) It was 3:00p and we were hungry for lunch so we went looking for a shaded picnic table near the lake. We found the perfect location EXCEPT FOR ONE THING…MOSQUITOES GALORE! They descended on us in a feeding frenzy when we parked to get our food out of the trunk. Quickly we jumped back into the car and it looked like those buggers were trying to come through the windows as they flew around waiting for the slightest opening. We were killing mosquitoes in the car for most of the time during lunch while the A.C. kept us cool. And we continued killing mosquitoes for some time after we left this little park.

Before we headed for the Customs border, we listed and tallied our items to declare. Melodie won this round since my declarations at the border came to $328 Ca and hers $358 Ca. The line at the border was pretty long and grew even longer as we waited our turn.  Our Border Patrol Officer was very nice and asked the usual interrogation questions: Where are you from? Are you both from Florida? Please remove your sunglasses while I talk with you. (not a question but something he had to ask me to do.) How long were you in Canada? Did you rent your car in Kalispell? (How did he know!) Are you bringing anything I should know about? (How do I know what you should know about?) Are you bringing in something for someone else? (well, yes, gifts! But that’s not what he meant.) I showed him the list and dollars I had made to declare and said that Melodie had a list too. He looked over the list and then looked in our back seat. Handing our passports back to us, he said, “Welcome Home!” and Melodie and I both felt a surge of emotion at the words.

We decided to stop at Many Glacier to do the Fishercap Lake hike and see if any moose were hanging out at the lake. No joy! But we were able to find tracks in the mud on the shore and will go there early on Monday morning to see if we can capture their lakeside fun before we leave the east side of Glacier. The beautiful butterflies drinking at the edge begged for a photo.

Wanting to do some wifi work and check our email, we stopped at St. Mary Lodge and had huckleberry lemonades and spent over an hour there. They have a wonderful apple/huckleberry crisp that looks divine but we didn’t want to ruin our dinner. We checked in to Rising Sun again and had dinner ordering their Farmer’s Market salad with tofu and bleu cheese dressing. No room for dessert but we’ll get some sooner or later.

Checked in to 15B, unloaded the car, and re-arranged our bags before heading out to find some elk in the meadows. We had just turned the corner from our cabin and there was a mother black bear and her cub right next to the side of the road. I turned off the headlights but she bolted into the brush around a nearby cabin. Darn! No time to grab a camera before she was gone.

Moonrise pictures were all we got from our outing. A shower and a Canadian whisky nightcap with some blogging and photo selection were done before climbing into bed at midnight.

Tomorrow is the North American Indian Pow Wow in Browning and we’re going to check it out.