Waterton Lakes National Park
I love it here. I love the campground that I'm staying in, and I love the rest of the park. Everything's easy.
I got up early today and drove into the park. Someone had told me back in Glacier that a good place to see bears was on Red Rock Canyon Road early in the morning. I got there about ten, a little late for optimum, but I still saw grizzlies. One was close, like just across the road, and the other ones were moving on the side of a hill. Very cool. Their coats were very shiny in the morning sun. I tried to take pictures, but the digital, with no zoom, was not great. No one seems to have batteries for the regular camera. Anyway, I watched the one by the car eat for a while. He was doing a kind of really fast grazing thing. Every once in a while, he would stop and look all around, and I thought of my dad telling us when we were kids that we didn't have to eat so fast, that nobody was going to take it away from us. He (the bear) probably knew that he DID have to eat fast, before all of the tourists showed up for a roadside bear-jam.
I drove on back the length
of the road, hiked a little, then on the way back, saw
a couple more bears far up on the mountain. By that time, there were lots
of cars and lots of people with binoculars and cameras. I drove on into town.
It was getting crowded, but I found a parking space right away, and walked through the stores and the historical society. That took all of about an hour. I changed money, then I went into a tiny grocery store and restocked. Then I took the Akamina Parkway back to the lake. It was a pretty drive and the lake is nice. I took off my shoes and socks and splashed in the water a bit. It was cold. It would've been a nice place to play in a kayak.
On the way back to Belly River, I parked alongside Maskinongee Lake. It was so pleasant that I fixed dinner, then I read for three hours. A '91 Vanagon Camper pulled in and parked in the next spot down from me.
I swam in the river (very cold) when I got back to my campsite, then I spent the evening with some people from Minneapolis. We were traveling in opposite directions, so we compared notes. I sent them home with my last bottle of the wine from New Mexico.
