OFF LINE ENTRY

Waterton Lakes Townsite Campground
Waterton Lakes National Park, Alberta
Friday, August 15, 2008, 8:20 pm

Clear, dry, and warm; the sun has dropped below the neighboring mountain
Temperature: 68F
Altitude: 4,161 feet

We arrived here in time for lunch, after a short, scenic drive from Glacier National Park in Montana and a perfunctory Canada Customs border crossing. This is a lovely site at the prairie-mountain interface. We are camped on Upper Waterton Lake, surrounded by steep mountain walls on three sides. It was quite warm this afternoon in the sun, but a cool breeze made it comfortable in the shade.

Waterton Lakes town is a picturesque tourist village--with inns, restaurants, cafes, and other basic services--in the middle of a small, but stunning mountain valley. The campground is on the edge of the village making everything within walking distance. The lake waters are cold and clear and reflect the surrounding mountains on their shimmering surfaces. The campground is permanently inhabited by Columbia ground squirrels (a smaller relative of the prairie dog), and their holes and tunnels are everywhere. Of course they are driving Charley crazy with their “chit-chit-chit” call and their ability to pop up out of a hole and then disappear and pop up 20 feet away. Then as soon as Charley was getting used to the ground squirrels, the mule deer started wandering through the campground. Charley thinks those are the biggest dogs he’s ever seen and tries to go play with them--until his lead jerks him back. Poor Charley has been tethered whenever he’s outside the camper or the Explorer, mainly because this is also bear country and a Charley-bear encounter is something we really don’t need to deal with.

But the big plus in moving from a remote part of Montana to a more developed resort village in Alberta is that we have two channels of over-the-air television, including CBC coverage of the Olympics. We just finished watching Michael Phelps win the butterfly gold by 1/100 of a second.

Tomorrow we plan to do a little hiking around this beautiful park and then maybe attend the evening naturalist program run by Parks Canada. Sunday we’ll move on to Kootenay National Park on the British Columbia side of the Great Divide.

There’s an Internet cafe in the village where we hope to be able to post this journal entry tomorrow.