Monday, July 4th - Glacier National Park to Baff, AB Canada

Montana is certainly a beautiful state with some of the most friendly people that I have encountered.  We woke up at 4am at our campground in Glacier National Park to bright sunlit skies.  One thing about this time of year is that the sun rises at 3:30am in Montana and seems to set at 10pm.  In fact at 11pm, there is still a little bit of lightness in the Western sky.  We broke camp at 7am and had a good ole fashioned country breakfast.  We explored as much of the park as we could due to the current road closures.   Glacier lake with its reflection of the nearby glaciers and mountains, made for some spectacular photos. On our way to East Glacier, my Grand Cherokee blew a radiator hose.  It was an easy fix as the break occurred just above the hose clamp.  The bad news was the holiday and the closest parts store was 40 miles away.  Luckily we found a Napa store in Canada that had the part and would be open for a few more minutes.  So John and Tommy headed to Canada to Napa and 2 hours later it was fixed and we were on the road again.  We finally reached Canada and found the Canadian boarder guards to be extremely unfriendly.  They singled out a couple of us and brought us to an interrogation room, where we were drilled with a number of questions.  After they tired of that, they took our passports and said that they would run criminal background checks on us and we were not to leave.  As we stared at the one way mirror with video cameras on the other side, we wondered what we did to get singled out and given this treatment.  20 minutes later, the border agent returned, brusquely handed us our passports and said we could go.  We left scratching our heads but went on to re-join the group.  By now it was getting late and we didn't think we could make it to the planned campground.  By 1am we decided to stop at Banff for the night and rest up and continue to the Icefields campground tomorrow.

Banff, AB Canada