7/27 Pincher Creek AB to Cut Bank MT

In the morning we had an excellent breakfast with perhaps the best coffee of the trip at a little diner in Pincher Creek that was one of the pilot's morning hangouts they had scoped out during their 2 months on the job. These little local jems become very important to find when you are constrained to stay in one place for long duration. Then we went to the airport and toured the planes. Again, Lou and Eric can provide more detail on the hardware. These guys were extremely competent pilots and knew their craft and their jobs inside and out. They fitted us with Conair (their company) hats before we left. OK, so we got a later than planned start toward Waterton/Glacier, but it was worth meeting these guys and making Canadian friends. If this trip were just about riding a motorcycle from point A to point B it would not have been nearly as much fun or worth doing. We looked forward to our next chance meeting with other travellers or natives as we moved cross country sharing our story and learning about other folks. To tell the truth if I new more about blogging when I started this trip or even during the trip I would have reached out even more and taken better notes. But then there would be even more words for you to wade through. We headed south on Route 6 and entered Waterton Lakes NP. This is a gorgeous park that is adjacent and similar to Glacier National Park. Together they are called Waterton Glacier International Peace Park. If you look at Google Earth you can see there is a cut line in the vegetation separating the two parks at the border. The terrain and vegetation is much the same as Glacier NP. We stopped at the Prince of Wales hotel to check out the view and take some pictures. We were lucky not to stay there from the tone of most of the reviews this motel gets on the Trip Advisor website. It too (along with the Fairmont at Lake Louise) is an old hotel that was on the grand railroad tour. According to the accounts it has seen better days. We met a couple from Alabama who decided not to stay because the rooms had no air conditioning or TV (sounds good to me!). It seems that the Canadian parks have these semi-formal old hotels set amidst stunning natural wonders. In the national parks in the states like Yellowstone and Glacier the big old hotels are just as impressive but much more rustic with bark and round wood construction. While at Waterton we drove up into the mountains to see Cameron Lake. Both Cameron and Upper Waterton Lake cross the international boundary and there are trail heads with a customs station at the southern end of UWL that you can pass through to hike into Glacier NP. We took Chief Mountain International Highway and crossed into the US. We gassed and ice creamed in Babb and entered Glacier NP at St. Mary. The east-west road through Glacier is called Going to the Sun highway and either way you traverse it, depending on the time of day, you go to the sun. It is one of the most spectacular roads I've ever ridden. It was carved into and through almost vertical cliff faces by Civilian Conservation Corps workers back in the 30's. These young men worked for $1 per day and had to send $25 home each month. They were provided room and board and, judging by the expert stone and wood work, instruction by trained artisans. The vegetation differences from one end of the Park to the other are quite remarkable. On the east side, it is extremely dry. Trees of any size are scattered and few, and generally clustered along streams. As you drive westward around Logan Pass whatever tree sized vegetation disappears to be replaced by stunted trees (krumholz), grasses and wildflowers. Logan Pass is just west of the Continental Divide. The scattered and droughty vegetation east of the CD is due to the rain shadow effect of the mountains. The stunted trees in the pass are due to shallow soil depth, poor water retention and extreme cold conditions. As you continue into the valley of Lake MacDonald and the Flathead River you drop in elevation and pick up deeper soils with much more moisture. You begin to find larger trees and many of them. Western hemlock, western red cedar, western white pine, western larch, lodgepole and ponderosa pine, Engelman spruce, subalpine fir as well as huge balsam poplar and cottonwood densely clothe the landscape. Lake MacDonald Lodge is a fabulous structure made entirely of bark-on western red cedar round wood. The main support posts holding up the roof are approximately 3 feet in diameter cedar 3 stories tall with very little taper. This is old growth timber. It is truly a lodge built on a grand scale. Throughout the Park at all our stops we made conversation with the young staff people none of whom were from Montana. Kansas, Florida, Washington, and Ukraine were some of the place names on their name tags. Also, wherever we went, in the Park or out, people would come up to us and ask us where we were going, where we had been, etc. When they found out about our adventure they were universally awed, amazed, curious and envious. There is probably no place else in the world where we could buy bikes and travel the distance we have without a tremendous amount of paperwork and identification documents. Even cruising into and out of Canada was a snap. It's a big country. We took Route 2 around the southerly end of Glacier NP and headed east reversing our day long westward trend. The west gate of Glacier was the furthest west we travelled in the lower 48. We made it to Cut Bank MT where we found one of the least expensive and nicest motels on the trip. The Glacier Inn had great rooms, new facilities and was very clean. Mr. Dinesh Patel was the owner operator and he did a great job. We were headed home.

7/26 Lake Louiise AB to Pincher Creek AB

This was the day when the temperature started out the coldest and ended up the hottest. When we started from the campground it was in the high 40's and by mid-day the ambient temperature thermometers on the bikes were reading 96 to 100 degrees F. So, even "in the wind" it was hot because the wind was hot. In addition, because our bikes were faired we got even less draft on us. Many times during the summer you will see riders with sleeveless shirts, shorts, etc., on their motorcycles. We don't do that. Very seldom will you see the Spada boys riding without full protective gear. It wasn't until we got into real all day heat in Montana that we broke down and rode with only long sleeve shirts, but we never neglected our helmets no matter how hot. Under these conditions it's critical to keep hydrated because you lose moisture so easily and quickly. We downed water alternating with Gatorade at each gas stop. Today's pace was leisurely although we covered over 300 miles. We searched out back roads, enjoyed the mountain and lake scenery south of Banff and stopped for cold drinks and food regularly. Only one bad stretch of road had us cursing. A biker in Whitehorse told us he had just driven Route 3 from north of Cranbrook BC to Cowley AB and said it was great road and we could access the north gate of Waterton Lakes National Park. It was great road for the most part except for a 6 kilometer stretch just east of Fernie BC. At that point we came upon a "construction ahead" sign. It turned out the construction was a re-surfacing job with stone chips and tar both of which were applied very thickly. What a mess! Tar and stone all over the bikes. The wheels kicked up stone and tar coating the underside of the fenders and sticking bits of tarry stone all over the fairings, frames and motors. I road next to Lou for a while and his wheels looked like the old fashioned "pinwheel" fireworks shooting off sparks only they shot off sprays of tar covered stone. Cars whizzzed by oblivious to us and what they were doing to us and their own vehicles sending stone showers everywhere. It sounded like a machine gun or a constant rain of pebbles on a tin roof as the stones hit the inside of our fenders . Very unnerving as the loose stone also caused wobbly riding. We were very happy to get out of the construction zone. We all agreed this was the worst stretch of road we hit on the entire trip. Undoubtedly, we will be cleaning tar and stone off these bikes for a long time. We finally pulled into Pincher Creek around 6 p.m. It had been a long hot day. Of course, Lou met up with a couple of pilots in the lobby of the motel. We met them for dinner and drinks. These guys work on contract with the Alberta government to fly tanker planes to suppress fires. They begin their season around May 21 and extend for the next four months on call 24/7 in case of forest fire. The crew consists of two pilots to fly the tanker, one pilot to fly the bird dog and two flight engineers to work on the planes. They indicated that although the fire danger was at its highest levels there had been no major fires in Alberta yet this fire season. Consequently, they trained and sat and mostly sat. Very boring. The bird dog pilot scouts the best route to the fire and sets up the run. He then circles around and lines up the tanker for the run. The bird dog follows the tanker on the run guiding them to the drop and lingering to photograph the actual drop. All drops are recorded and graded. The pilots must make accurate drops or face the possibilty of not getting their contract extended the following year. I'll let Lou and Eric provide more details on the type of planes they flew. We had a great time at and after dinner talking with them about their planes and their work. One of the pilots named Shane, turned out to be a geek and really had a lot in common wth Eric so they had a very high tech chat. I finally heard what Eric does for work; he designs and builds computer chips. Ask him about it. Anyhow, they invited us out to their airfield in the morning to tour the planes and their facilities.