Oh CANADA! Waterton Lakes National Park – August 7th – 9th, 2016

We survived the border crossing and went to get a campsite at Crandell Mountain Campground inside Waterton Lakes National Park. Rather than make us stand in a line all morning, the Canuck’s system for getting a campsite in a National Park was much more efficient. They simply handed us a queue number and told us to come back between 11am and 2pm. That easy! So we went into Waterton to make some plans and again catch up on our quality time with the Internet. We parked right outside of Subway and found a way on to their network without actually buying a sub– we simply hopped on the local free (and painfully slow) wifi, looked up the Subway store number, typed it in, gave them our email address, and we were on our way to some free high speed internet! For our efforts they rewarded each of us with a FREE 6” sub! On a regular day Subway would not even make the list of potential places to eat, but somehow free always seems to taste better! We occupied our campsite around 11am and spent a couple of hours doing some old fashioned trip planning with real books and maps (it was surprisingly efficient, imagine that!) before heading back to Subway to continue internet planning.

The next day was Andy’s 28^th Birthday!!! HAPPY BIRTHDAY ANDY! We took the ferry to Crypt Lake Trailhead and spend the day hiking about 12 miles round-trip to a stunning alpine glacier lake. There was an exposed rock face leading to an 8 foot ladder up to a 60 foot long natural tunnel. Tucker was the only dog on the trail and turned out to be quite the little mountain goat. He made it over half way up the ladder before we hoisted him up the rest of the way! People were shocked, he was quite the crowd pleaser. At Crypt Lake we did a quick illegal border crossing to the USA before heading back into Canada. 

Scenery around Crypt Lake. 

Natural tunnel on the trail to Crypt Lake.

Entrance to the natural tunnel.

Panorama of Crypt Lake. The US is in the distance at the other side of the lake. 

After returning to Waterton, we Skyped Andy’s family. It is also his Mom’s birthday on August 8^th (HAPPY BIRTHDAY MOM!)! To celebrate, we bought a homemade pie from a local grocery store and lit a lighter for him to blow out. We ate left overs for dinner after eating the birthday pie (because we are adults and we can). We figured we would rain check his birthday dinner for when we were in a town with a wider selection of restaurants to choose from. All in all a pretty successful birthday I’d say!

Before leaving Waterton the next morning, we drove the Red Rock Canyon to hopefully spot some wildlife. We had heard there were many bears in the area and we were hoping to catch a glimpse from the safety of Bernie. Unfortunately, we only sited a couple of deer.