Tuesday June 8th and Wednesday June 9th

Tuesday June 8th the weather held. In fact it was great the entire trip to Glacier. All along the drive to Glacier the Montana landscape was a patchwork of brown, dead or dyeing pine trees. So far, Montana has lost at least a million acres to the Pine Bark Beetle.

The road leading out of Helena, once off of the interstate, was a series of rolling hills with the vast expanse of the Rockies in the background. The pictures are from various vantage points up to and leading into and through a part of the park. If a picture is worth a 1000 words then there are no pictures that I could include that would do this place justice. What’s missing from the pictures is the scope of the place.

I knew that the weather would be good on Tuesday but that it was supposed to cloud over and start raining again on Wednesday so I did as much as I could on Tuesday. I entered on the east side of the park because of better weather. There’s a road that goes through the middle of the park, from east to west, that is supposed to be spectacular. As of June 8th the road was still closed because of snow. If you look close at the picture on the right you can see a couple of cars at a turn-out. On the picture on the left there are trees on a ridge at the bottom - this might help in giving an idea of the scale.

I pulled into one of the many campgrounds and set up my tent to discover that my expensive down sleeping bag was either along the road somewhere or at home in the garage keeping the mice warm. I road 12 miles to a small outdoor store and bought the only sleeping bag they had -$40 good to 35 degrees. After spending the night - they should revise that to 55 degrees.

The parks are great and the camp sites are nice but what you have to deal with to contend with the bears does make camping a real chore. You can’t picnic, you can’t wash your dishes, unless you are in a camper that can contain the gray water. The black bear in the picture just walked past my tent after deciding I was too old to eat.

June 9th I packed and hit the road to Calgary and Lake Louise. It rained straight the entire trip.

In Calgary I had had enough of the rain and the first motel I spotted was a Days Inn -$329 a night - the next motel was a flea bag for $280 and the Hyatt was $650. I asked what was going on and was told the largest petro convention in the world was in town.

I headed towards Banff and was wet and unbelievably cold and finally got to a motel about 20 miles from my destination. I’ve been trying to dry out my shoes in the microwave (I hope the smell doesn't taint who ever uses it after me). Also - my cell phone no longer works. But - hey - it’s all a part of the adventure.

On a motorcycle some days are better than others. For good or bad - you do experience the weather.