Welcome Home

Saturday, July 13, 2014

We did such a good job yesterday of seeing what we wanted to in the park, that we can spend today in the township before we leave for our home-away-from-home in Glacier.  We check out right at 10:30, their appointed time, and drive to Cameron Falls.  It takes about five minutes!!  The falls are right in town!  We stop to admire the rushing water, then walk to the shops. 

He's a different kind of chipmunk - Bill, which is he?

The Prince of Wales Hotel looks quite lovely from a distance;  but close, not so much!

Along the way we watch a deer cross the street and continue on her merry way, undeterred by people or traffic.  Apparently the residents are all accustomed to their four-footed neighbors and the tourists are charmed, so the deer have never learned to fear people.

 Next we encounter two members of the Teenie Weenie Theater company!  The young man is a theater major and the girl was a theater and music major but is not undecided.  The real performers in the play are large flower puppets.  The one on the left is very shy but the purple-haired one is quite the diva!

Aren't they just adorable?!

Oh my goodness!  Here comes the deer back again, re-crossing the street so as to dine on someone’s awe-inspiring flowers!  All the flowers here are outsized and memorable!  I suppose it is another example of Mother Nature making excellent use of the time available for spreading color and loveliness.  The residents are adept at accenting the natural beauty of the park with architecture and flora.

Everyone enjoys the park in his own way!

We are in and out of at least eight gift shops and art galleries, laughing at the outrageous Canadian puns and buying Christmas presents.  Marilyn comes upon an Indian maiden burlap mask, which would be perfect on her wall.  The artistry is quite remarkable but the price is a little high.  She asks the clerk if there are more and learns that the three on display are all they have because they are “older stock”.  That’s Marilyn’s opportunity to bargain down to a lower price.  She is successful!  The clerk even wraps it up for safe travel.

I’m feeling all fat, dump and happy because I didn’t buy the other mask.  Then, in the last shop, I stumble on a pair of earrings that are too beautiful to leave.  They’re less than half the price of the mask, but still – I had promised myself not to buy anything else.  Oh, well. They sure won’t take up any space in my suitcase!  The young lady even makes a photo copy of the description of the artist and her technique. Who knows, I might be strong enough to give them as a present.

There is a whole line of these great shirts!

We’re both shopped out, so we head for the walkway which runs along Cameron Creek.  Even though it has gotten quite toasty out, it’s a beautiful walk.  The water is that surprising shade of turquoise and there are tour boats filled with tourists as well as families enjoying the weather and water activities.  We see one young father on a paddleboard, with his young son sitting on the board.  He is towing one little girl in a raft by means of a rope.  The other little girl is holding on to her sister’s paddle to make a three craft parade!  Too cute!  Mom on the shore is harassing dad by saying things like, “Go faster!  Paddle harder!”

 The path runs between the shore and rental cabins which must be completely booked.  In the yard of one of them a deer is peacefully asleep.  She’s found a nice shady spot under a tree and is oblivious to the splashing children.

Lazy afternoon!

Just such a pretty place!

Soon the path turns away from the water and cuts through a large campground.  There is one area for RVs and another for tent campers where the little pop-ups look like a fairy ring of mushrooms!  We also see picnic areas which are constructed like little cabins with one wall missing, so you can still picnic in the rain or the hot sun without mishap.

We have come full circle and are back at our car.  Waterton has been a terrific addition to our Glacier experience and I wouldn’t have missed it for the world!  Time, though, to head back.

We’ve spent so much time exploring Waterton Township that we’re ready for lunch and take the road to Maskinonge Lake and find a picnic table with some shade by the water.  The problem though arises when we open the car door and the swarming vampires assault us!  I’ve never seen such eager diners!  We picnic in the car, trying to kill all the ones that entered with us.  Lunch finished, we get back on the road.

There is plenty of time for the trip, so we take one more swing through the Bison Paddock.  We didn’t realize how lucky we had been yesterday to have so many of them so close to the car!  We are nearly three-quarters of the way around the loop before we sight a single animal, and even then, they aren’t close! They are down by the lake shore and surprisingly enough we actually get better pictures today.  The lighting is much better and there aren’t other cars waiting for us to move.

 We think there are two males, three females and four calves.  One of the males seems to prefer to be by himself and we spot him lying in a depression that he uses to wallow in, taking a sand bath.  The ones we saw in Yellowstone actually stick all four feet in the year, but this guy just rolls on his side and then stands back up.  He still raises quite a dust cloud!

 Onward and southward. There is a line of cars waiting to cross into the United States, unlike the other direction, where there is one car that barely pauses at the boundary line.  Each vehicle stops for a few minutes and we think maybe you must have to fill out a customs declaration form now.  We don’t remember previous crossings being so time consuming.  Finally it is our turn and the border-control agent asks for our passports, and some potentially confusing questions for visitors.  Are you bringing in anything for someone else?  Well, I think he means did someone else give us a bag to bring across the border;  but we are bringing lots of things for other people as gifts!  He wants to know if we have any Nestle’s eggs.  Well if you don’t know about Kinder Eggs and that they can’t be sold in the US, that question is meaningless.  In fact, it made Marilyn glad that we hadn’t stopped at the chocolate shop because she thought he meant we couldn’t bring in anything chocolate. 

The other interesting one was, “Do you have anything I should know about?”  Well, I don’t know.  What should you know about!  He asked where we were from and Marilyn told him Florida, so he checked to make sure we were both from Florida.  I think he was checking against our passports.  Then he said, “And you rented your car in Kalispell, right?”  Lucky guess?  Some data base somewhere?  After peering into the back seat, and assuring himself that we weren’t hiding a bear or moose back there, ‘cause, really, what else could he tell from our messy back seat, he waved us on and said, “Welcome home!”  I’m caught off guard by my emotional reaction to that.

We are heading south, to Many Glaciers comes before St. Mary’s.  That means we can turn into Many Glaciers and take the twelve-mile drive back to the trailhead for Fisher Cap Lake.  We’re going to give the moose one more shot;  but, alas, they are still not in residence.  We see lots of tracks, though, which verifies there use of the area.  We see another cluster of butterflies along the water’s edge. 

That blue blur is one of those gorgeous blue butterflies that are so hard to catch!

Back to St. Mary Lodge for internet access!  YAY!  And two huckleberry lemonades!  I’m really going to miss huckleberries!  Hunger pangs and blog postings all indicate that it’s time to return to Rising Sun to check in and get dinner.  Tonight we have dinner music!  A young man with a lovely voice is singing and playing the guitar, working his way through a Beatles and James Taylor song book, while we enjoy our Farmer’s Market Salads with crispy tofu.  It’s a great salad with raw green beans, seasoned and roasted baby potatoes, grated carrots as well as all the usual salad fixin’s.

James was accepted as a voice and guitar major but has added production and business.

We have a different cabin, with a different view but the same appointments; and with the curtains drawn, it feels just like home.  We bring in everything from the car so that we can re-organize and pack our presents on the bottom of our suitcases so we don’t keep tripping over them when we need clean clothes.  That doesn’t take too long and it feels great to have things under control again.  I recycle all the old paperwork that we no longer need and that’s great, too.  By now it is dusk, which is to say, about ten, and we take one more drive to look for the elk.  We haven’t even left the cabin area when we see five or six people all staring at one spot.  There is a mama black bear pushing her cub up and away from the people, between two of the cabins!  It all happens so fast that by the time we stop the car and roll down the window, there isn’t a chance for a picture.  But we saw them!  And that counts!  We’ve now had seven bear sightings!

There are no elk to be seen;  but the full moon takes your breath away, rising behind the  reflecting on the lake!  We drive up and back looking for the right vantage point and when we’re satisfied we return to the cabin. I can't quite give up, though, and have to have a walk about to see if there isn't just one more shot!  Then, and only then, is it time for bed!