Thursday, June 9
Day 2

Our first real travel day started out with us making a deviation. A deviation is anytime you go off the planned route for the caravan. While it is entirely OK to make a deviation, you are giving up the services of the tailgunner since he must stay on the planned route. We left Great Falls about 9:00 and took the ramp onto I-15 as we were supposed to do. However, about 2 miles up the road, it split - one lane going north to Canada, and the other going south to Helena. Jenna was driving and I was busing writing down our start time, mileage, temperature, etc. This was the same road we had taken Monday to Glacier National Park so I didn't pay attention to where we went. About 30 miles down the road, we noticed beautiful mountains and we both commented that we didn't remember seeing them on Monday. Much to our dismay, we were going South instead of North. We ended up going 68 miles roundtrip before we got back on the right path. We did see some beautiful country, so it wasn't a total loss.

After a stop in Shelby, Montana to fill up with diesel ($4.04 a gallon) we made it to the Alberta, Canada border crossing about 12:30. We pulled into the first available gate and were greeted by a sweet young lady. She asked why we were coming to Canada, if we had tobacco or alcohol, if we had mace or pepper spray, if we had firearms, if we had ammunition, how long we planned to be in Canada, where did we come from - the usual questions. No questions about potatoes or pets. She then handed me a yellow slip and our passports and told us to pull to the left and go into the office. We noticed that no one else was to the left, but complied with her request. The young man behind the counter in the office asked the same series of questions plus a few, and then informed us that they were "randomly" selecting vehicles to be searched for firearms - and lucky us had be "randomly selected." I think they were "randomly" selecting vehicles with Texas license plates. He assured us the search wouldn't take too long. He continued to ask questions - "do you hunt," "have you been to Canada before," etc. Then suddenly he said " drive carefully and have a nice trip." We left with no search. I had been told that they did "randomly select" Texans because "every Texan carries a gun."

We journeyed on several miles to the Milk River Information Center. We picked up brochures about Canada and some of the places we will be visiting, had lunch in the RV on the parking lot, and countinued our journey to Hill Spring, Alberta and the Great Canadian Barn Dance and RV Park. This RV park is located just east of the Waterton National Park. We are all parked on a big grassy field just west of the Canadian Rockies. Every afternoon we have a social. You bring your own drinks and maybe a snack to share; everyone gathers in a big circle and we swap stories about our day. We shared our deviation and our border crossing story. No one else had been stopped! We could see the mts. as we drove in, but they disappeared into haze as the sun began to set. They tell us we should be able to see them quite well a little later. This really is a nice park - good views, very simple, quiet, and serene.

We should have traveled about 218 miles today; however we traveled about 286 miles! Tomorrow we will take a bus tour of the area and visit two museums. When we return we will have a "Welcome to Canada Dinner" at the Barn Dance. It will be followed by, what else but a barn dance. I'll Report on that tomorrow. Until then, Happy Trails.