Diary

Mileage:  50 miles

Elevation Change:  182 feet

Weather:  puffy clouds and hot

Morale:  happy to be bored

Incidents:  rode too far up the road and had to go through the border crossing station with no ID

Daily Summary:

We slept for 13 hours!  Our cabin was so quiet and so dark that we got a GREAT night’s sleep.  (It was so quiet that the noise that the refrigerator made when it turned on was startling!)  We slept until ten, then had to ride down the road for 3 miles to the Park Café for breakfast.  The Park Café is the only show in town, so there was a wait for a table.  The food was great, but we didn’t get on the road until noon.  Fortunately, we didn’t have far to go.  Our destination was the Canadian border.

 

We had a wonderful ride on the high plains of Montana.  The craggy peaks of Glacier and Waterton National Parks were to our left, and the endless rolling plains were ahead of us and to our right.  The scenery was wonderful and the weather was perfect.  We rolled right up to the border to take our pictures.  Unfortunately, we didn’t notice that this would force us to go through the passport control on the way back.  We were traveling ultralight, so didn’t have much to show for ourselves.  But we had a good story so they let us through. 

 

The eastern side of Glacier is MUCH less developed than the western side.  There are only two VERY small towns between the park entrance and the border.  We had breakfast in the first (St Mary) and had lunch in the other (Babb).  All of our meals on this side of the park in the two nights we spent here were remarkable.  Really good food!  Lunch was at the Babb Press, where we learned about the Babb Fest going on a few miles down the road.  It sounded like a nice way to spend the rest of the afternoon.  It was a music festival at a campground.  Free camping, free beer, and free music, all for the low low price of $40 each.  We didn’t have $80, and we didn’t want to cycle 10 miles to the nearest cash machine to get it, so the Babb Fest was a bust. 

 

We cycled back to our cabin and hung out on the front porch for awhile, but were soon bored out of our skull.  No TV, no computer, nothing to read (not even a bible!) meant we had absolutely NOTHING to do.  We cycled down the road 3 miles to St Mary to see if we could at least find a bar with a baseball game on.  No such luck.  It was actually kind of fun to be so bored for an afternoon.  That never happens!

 

We cycled up to the Two Sisters Café for a great rainbow trout dinner with Huckleberry pie for dessert.  Another great meal.  Back to the cabin and early to bed. 

 

Below is Raymond at the border, followed by the great scenery of the high planes.  Next is Lil at our first state sign.  Finally, Ray on the porch of our log cabin.