Road Trip

So a couple of months ago Justin and I were brainstorming things we could do together and places we could go to get out of town. I mentioned Waterton as we tried to think of other Banff-type places. It's not close, though, so we might have to make it a overnight trip, I commented. And he really jumped on this idea. He brought it up again shortly after I got home from Cuba, but I was so tired that I just felt overwhelmed by the idea. Then I realized I'd have a couple extra days off this week, and I started to feel comfortable with the idea of planning a Waterton trip.

It seems like a lot of people have never heard of Waterton. (Justin was one of them.) It is a National Park in the bottom left corner of Alberta, nestled along the borders with BC and Montana. On the other side of the American border the park extends into Glacier National Park, and the BC counterpart is the Akamina-Kishinina Provincial Park. The hilights of Waterton are the mountains and Waterton Lake (pictured here).

Waterton boasts some of the best hiking in the Rockies. I'm not much of a hiking enthusiast, though, and neither is Justin. We prefer "hike-slash-walks" that lean more in the direction of "walk." We took a couple of walks: we walked along the lake beside the town in the dark the first night we got there, we walked around Cameron Lake (which reminded me of Lake Louise in how it was completely surrounded by mountains), and we walked the loop around Red Rock Canyon before we left to come home. And we even took something that would definitely be considered a hike: the Bear's Hump. It was described as "moderate/difficult," but it was only an hour long (return) so we figured we could handle it. We did, but it was hard. Justin called it the worst 1.4 kms of his life. But we made it, and the view from the top was rewarding. It was interesting to notice my own style of hiking. I take really little steps, and they turn out really slow because each step has two parts: foot down, leg straight. It works for me though!

A website describing "Things to do in Waterton" suggested going down into the States and driving along the Going To The Sun Highway through Glacier National Park. It sounded pretty, so we did that the first day before going to Waterton. It was great! There were so many places to stop, so many things to look at, so much to do. We wished we had more time to see everything - there was so much we passed by for the sake of time, and we turned back when we'd only gone half way. We're planning to go back sometime.

The border guard that met us as we returned to Canada after spending a few hours in the States was suspicious of our story. It seemed unlikely to him that people would only leave the country for part of a day, and then return with few new acquisitions. He questioned us about our employment status and how we knew each other, and made us pop the trunk. I couldn't believe we looked shifty enough to warrant his suspicions. It was nice to have nothing to hide though. Maybe he was being driven crazy by the monster mosquitos they had in that area.

One great thing about both Waterton and Glacier, especially in comparison to a place like Banff, is how quiet it was. We were often the only people around, or there would be a few others. No crowds. No bustle. It felt like we had the mountains to ourselves. I really liked that, and I'd definitely go again.