A change of Plans--Back to Ohio!

     Our last day in Calgary and Pete's left arm weakness, pain and numbness is getting worse despite the medication he is taking.  We decided to head back to Great Falls, Montana rather than continue on to the Alaska outback where medical care might not be available.  We hated to leave.  The caravan trip was just wonderful and we would love to go again sometime.  The ER doctor advised us to get a neck MRI and since there was only one in Great Falls and it was booked up, we decided to return to Cincinnati.

Last year's champions make aerial arrival

Opening ceremony Calgary Stampede

     We stayed overnight at the Theodore Roosevelt National Park in North Dakota.  It was right on the way home and just great.  We got the last site in the campground.  Dinner was on a high bluff at the "Pitchfork Steak Fondue".  Thick steaks were speared on a pitch fork and cooked in a huge vat of hot oil--it was delicious and quite fun to watch.  The view was fantastic!

Note the steaks on the pitchfork

     The Medora Musical was right next to our dining site.  It was so well done.  Lots of high energy young people singing and dancing on a stage that was snuggled into the hill.  The staging included natural hills behind the stage with dramatic lighting.  The show featured the "Flight Crew Jump Rope Team"---couldn't believe the creative acrobatics with jump ropes.  The whole evening was a real treat.
   

Flight Crew Jump Rope Team

Flight Crew

We drove the 36 mile scenic loop through the park--buffalo right next to the road and prairie dog villages along the way.  Beautiful drive.

     The next two days were 12 and 13 hour driving days but we made it home, opened our garage door and the electricity went out for 10 hours due to a huge thunderstorm!  However, we were greeted by fresh flowers, food and and   all kinds of signs the little girls had made so all is well in our world. 

How nice to come home to all this love!  Pete saw the Dr and is getting a MRI so hopefully he will get treated and we'll be good to go again!

     We had 4 wonderful weeks of travel and adventure and hopefully Alaska will be a future trip for us!  Thanks for reading our blog!

Oh Canada!

Our RV has been checked out and even the under carriage inspected by our Tailgunner, Jesse.  We passed thanks to Pete’s preparations.  There are lots of things that can go wrong in deserted areas!  Jesse comes around every travel day at 7:30 am to thump the tires with a 9 iron to make sure that the double axle big RVs have no flat tires because they don’t always look flat.  Pete says every farm boy knows this.  News to this suburban lady!

We started out with our group of three rigs (Pod)  and our walkie talkies ready to go!  

Members of our pod

 Pete is loving those—wish we’d had these as kids.  They reach about a mile so we can discuss rest stops etc.  Works really well and fun to use.   We have detailed driving instructions.  We can drive on our own but we found it is more fun with the pod and it is really relaxing to just follow Ron and Joyce who like to lead.  Crossing the border was a piece of cake. We think being in the caravan of geezers (Carrie’s high school fond description of us) helped.

We drove about 4 hours to Great Canadian Barn Dance Campground and settled in for the night after snacks and drinks with the group.  People told funny things that happened—one guy’s air conditioner cover fell off his RV and got stuck under the next RV.  They had to jack up the RV to pull it out.  It is now back in place with bungee cords and duct tape!   The same man (apparently feeling the stress of the air conditioner) was trying to fill his RV with fresh water but instead connected it to the black water (sewer tank in his RV).  The sewage tank filled up and the pressure shot sewer water up through the vents on the roof of his RV while he was trying to re-attach his air conditioner cover!    Our fellow travelers helped him out and he loved telling the story of his bad day.

 The farmland in Alberta, Canada has VAST expanses of yellow flowers---thousands of acres.  We found out these are Canola plants!  So that’s where your Canola oil comes from!

Field upon field of Canola, as far as the eye can see

A tour bus picked us up this morning at 7:45 am for a day of sightseeing.  The Remington Carriage Museum was first.   There were 300 carriages and sleighs of all types.  The tour, carriage ride and the movie were all top notch. 

Carriage ride

Then onto “Head Smashed in Buffalo Jump” museum which is devoted to Black Foot Indians and how they were so dependent on the buffalo for their survival.  They dressed as wolves and caused the buffalo herd (50- 250) to stampede and run off a cliff to their death.  Several tribes worked together to use every part of the buffalo and this would keep them alive through the winter.  Very well done exhibits, movie, tour guide and native dance show.

That same evening we feasted on a TERRIFIC dinner at the campground followed by an EVEN BETTER show put on by the very musical family that are the third generation owners of the campground.  Can’t remember when we enjoyed a show so much.  Ronan, their gifted 18 yr old son, played at least 6 instruments and sang.  They put on old fashioned barn dances on the weekends—would love to go to that!

Tomorrow we head out again with our RV pals to Calgary! Touring the city and attending the Calgary Stampede,  one of the largest rodeos in the world.

The day started with the Calgary Stampede parade leaving the park at 7am.  There were seven hundred horses in the parade, including miniature and Percherons, Mexican dancers,  and Royal Mounties--it was pretty good.

Royal Canadian Mounted Police -- "Mounties"

From there we went to Heritage Park for a lovely gourmet lunch and then a tour of the park.  It is a restored village from 1910 in Alberta complete with a cast of people dressed in the period who stayed in character.   It was Disney quality without the crowds.  Train, horse carriage rides and boat rides all included made it really interesting.  They also had a museum of old cars and gasoline pumps.  Pete remembers the Old Hudson his grandfather had--just like the one in the picture along with the old gas pumps.

Salesman trying to sell Pete a 1930 Hudson

Day 2 in Calgary!  The beauty of this Adventure Caravan is that every detail is taken care of for us--so much more relaxing and  we have the fun to share with our fellow travelers!  Our Wagon Masters (Jan and Ray) arrange "dog walkers" since we would be gone over 9 hours--they really think of everything.  There are 24 dogs in our group!  The bus picks us up right by our RV--they hand out water on the bus and off we go.  The drive took us by the site of the 1988 winter Calgary Olympics.  These are the ski jumps along with the luge and bobsled runs (not seen in the picture).

Ski jumps Calgary Olympics

First stop was beautiful Olympic square in downtown Calgary where the streets were blocked off and over 15 pancake and bacon stands were set up--the one in the picture was sponsored by a funeral home!  Blueberry pancakes, syrup wrapped around a strip of bacon--ALL FREE and people just kept getting in different lines until full.  There were country artists singing, square dances, and lots of flowers and "characters everywhere"!

Free pancakes and bacon

Our trip provided us all tickets to the lovely Benbow museum which was right in the same area so we were able to get a little culture in with the pancakes!





Our big bus picked us right up and off to the Calgary Stampede grounds.  The first order of business was more food--had to try the famous Canadian POUTINE.  These are french fries covered with gravy and cheese curds.  Not that tasty to us but they were BIG sellers!

Poutine

 The rodeo started with fireworks, horses tearing around the track and then the bronco bull riders coming down on wires from the upper grandstand--very impressive.  I guess if you can face a 1500 pound bull close up, sliding down a hundred feet on a wire is no big deal!  All the events were terrific but what made our day was a GRANDMOTHER winning the barrel racing.  The cheering was awesome--especially from our group of mostly seniors. 

Great Falls, MT

Leaving Glacier, our last campground meal---this is significant because it is the FIRST time we have cooked any food on an outside burner.  I always cook everything in the microwave so this is a bold new world.  Hamburgers and Ramen noodles were our current successes!

Back in Great Falls, Montana and off to see these great falls!  These falls are beautiful but the real story behind them was the most interesting.  Lewis and Clark were looking for the Northwest passage (a continuous river route from the Missouri river to the Pacific ocean).  There is no such passage but they were asked by President Jefferson to find one so they were in boats going AGAINST the current up the Missouri River trying to find it.  They discovered 5 sets of waterfalls that made it necessary to portage around by building sleds with wheels and drag all their equipment including hollowed out wooden canoes by hand 18 miles to by-pass the falls.  The Lewis and Clark National Historic Trail Interpretive Center has two movies and very large exhibits of their travels.  Two hours were well spent.

This is a suspension bridge at Great Falls--looks very solid but get 6 people on that thing and you needed Dramamine!

 

Suspension bridge to the Great Falls

This is the Great Falls with the dam and hydroelectric power plant.

The Great Falls, Lewis and Clark

We are now at Dick's campground the staging area for the Adventure Caravan to Canadian Rockies and Alaska!  The leaders Jan and Ray (Wagon Masters) and Rita and Jesse (Tail Gunners) are delightful and so organized.  They have thought of EVERYTHING!  We have gotten together with our  50 new best friends and they are a nice bunch!  People are from all over the U.S.  Some are full-time RVers and others are like us.  There are about 25 VERY large RV's towing cars on this venture.  Some of them have washer and dryers in them and freezers!  We look like a toy RV next to them!  Tomorrow, July 4th is our first official day and briefing and then off we go to Canada!

One last thing before we go...Bailey gets a bath!  It is a little trickier with a camper but Pete got the job done.

Glacier National Park, Montana

Now we have arrived in Glacier National Park at the St Mary's campground!  This park is huge and well maintained.  The Visitors center at St Mary's is really well done.  This year marked the 100th anniversary of the National Park System and the ranger's explanation was top notch.  The park rangers seem to be college kids or retired teachers who want to keep on teaching!  They do a wonderful job.  Our campground is full so reservations good idea--we are here for 4 nights. There is a "first come first served" Rising Sun campground about 6 miles up "Going to the the Sun Highway".

Picture out the car window


We went on a guided mini-bus tour of the first third of "Going to the Sun Highway" with Sun tours.  After July first, this road is served by a shuttle bus since it is so narrow and crowded.    It is hard to believe they built these roads hanging onto the sides of the mountains over 100 years ago. Our guide, Mary, was an American Indian and told us stories of what the mountains mean to her tribe.  They buried their dead in trees after they made them a complete set of new beaded clothes and moccasins and wrapped them in antelope skins.  Their spirits had a chance to escape from their bodies and then later they were buried.  Modern regulations no longer permit this type of escape!

Mary explaining Indian medicinal plants

We are in St Mary's campground and about 5 miles away there was a large forest fire that was deliberately set by a pyromaniac last July 2015.   She is now in federal prison. 

The burn area near mountain stream

The scenery is magnificent!  The glacier melt makes the lakes a gorgeous blue and there are lots of waterfalls along the way.  The mountain glaciers and peaks are beautiful.  We stopped at Logan Pass Visitor Center and watched people walking up the mountain with snowboards and skis.  If you zoom in the snowy mountain picture you can see the skiers.  It doesn't get dark until 10pm here...good training for the LONG daylight in Alaska!

Fact---The RED car tours up the Highway to the Sun are a better tour but you need to book these in advance--sold out for a week ahead.  We think tours are better than shuttle buses because you are provided commentary.
Glacier doesn't even open the Going to the Sun Highway until mid June due to snow and avalanches so their busy season starts July 4th.
St Mary's campground Loop A has the most trees--request if you book ahead.

Today we drove 20 easy miles to Many Glaciers campground and trails.  I am running out of superlatives for this scenery. Everywhere you look is a postcard view.  There are no burn areas in this part of the park so our hike on the Grinnel Glacier trail was through beautiful pine forest and along beautiful glacial lakes.   The weather has been PERFECT since the day we left home!

We stopped to hike to a beautiful falls right off the road.  Pictures tell it all!

Pete's neck and arm haven't been getting much better and really bothers him off and on.  I've never seen this man take an Advil in 37 years until this flared up.  We called my brother in law Tim Gray in Oregon.  He is a D.O. and very knowledgeable about musculoskeletal disorders.  He had some great advice and so we think we are on the right track now.   Thank you Tim!

We  drove the Highway to the Sun on our way out of the park.  Pete found it to be the most challenging driving he has ever done--one wrong turn of the wheel and we would be DONE!
The views were something else but the road had rocks jutting out on our ride side threatening to take off the side mirrors.  He did a great job and we lived!  Now off to join up with our Caravan to Canadian Rockies and Alaska!

Going to the sun highway

Click on the link to see some video of Glacier --- https://youtu.be/ZQy5dkuXjZ0

Beartooth Highway and Yellowstone

Drove to Red Lodge a cute little town then to another National Forest camp ground as we started up the Beartooth Highway.  We were very happy to get the last site there because there were great bursts of wind up to 50 miles an hour blowing dirt everywhere.  Beautiful spot with another unusual tent on top of a car! 

Tent on top of car

Continuing up the Beartooth highway which is mainly in Wyoming.  Huge vistas everywhere.  This road was not for the faint of heart!  Another beautiful campground appeared for us.  The camp host went to the Naval Academy with Roger Staubach and shared stories about him.  This campground was adjacent to a huge ranch owned by the Quaker Oats family.  Gorgeous ranch home!

Ranch in valley below campground--Quaker Oats founder

There were lots of hairpin turns as we climbed up to the Rock Creek Vista ranger station that had a beautiful walkway to view the mountains.  This antique vehicle was one of the original Yellowstone touring cars that brought guests up to see the sights.  It has been refurbished and is back in business! We stopped and hiked up to a beautiful falls.

Over the highest pass (it was very cold and windy up there) and then on our way down into North Yellowstone.  This was the most beautiful part of the drive with mountain lakes and pine trees.

I was thinking how very friendly people are--smiling at us all the time.  Then I realized it was Bailey they were looking at!  She is always a big hit.

Driving through Yellowstone, we have seen 4 bear, several antelope and a thousand buffalo!  We had to stop twice for horses loose on the road and a man riding a unicycle along the highway with no civilization for miles!


 

On to Great Falls Montana to stop at an ER to check out Pete's left arm pain and numbness which was made worse by turning his head.  After convincing the ER staff that his heart was fine, they did a  neck Xray which showed arthritis.  Armed with muscle relaxers, steroids and arthritis medication we were on our way again.  Just a little worse for wear!

More on video at:    https://youtu.be/aAtLLVe_oek