Travelogue -- Dr Bob's US Northwest Motorcycle Ride
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25 June 2013, 11:00 PM MT, Great Falls, MT

I have a surprise for today. I rode my bike into Canada. Here's my new Canadian friend, Rob, welcoming me to Canada.

I am jumping well into the day, but let me continue with this part of the story then I will go back earlier. After I finished exploring Glacier National Park, I discovered I was only ten miles from Alberta, Canada. I had my passport with me. I decided to go for it. I went through Canadian immigration, rode the bike about 500 feet to the sign you see in the picture above, posed with Rob, then turned around and went through American immigration and continued my journey. I was in Canada about 15 minutes, but I was there. I can now say I have ridden my bike in Canada.

Back to the start of my day. I was in Idaho, close to the Montana border. After a few minutes on the bike, I was in Montana. Here's my first view of Montana.

You can see blue sky, but you can also see that the top of the mountain is in the clouds. The weather has not cleared completely yet. In fact, I was in some rain late in the Glacier part of my day.

Here's three more Montana pictures, they show the countryside as I headed to Glacier. You are going to get a lot of pictures today. I hope you are up to this.

That's a railroad bridge.

The ride was just so pleasant. Beautiful scenery in the mountains, usually with a river beside the road. Then the scenery changed.

I'm off the Interstate now, headed into the mountains.

I'm going to go through that gap into the distant mountains.

I'm getting closer to Glacier all the time.

I have entered Glacier National Park now. I am on the Going-To-The-Sun Road. Towering mountains with glaciers are right by the road.

Lots of water.

Two beautiful waterfalls.

I went past them looking for a good place to park the bike to get a picture, but went too far. Then I turned around and went too far. There was no place to park where you could see the falls. So, I had to do a little walking to get this picture.

Here's a closeup of one of the waterfalls.

Road construction caused us to sit here about 15 minutes, then we were escorted a couple of miles over rough road that they are going to re-pave.

This is Logan Pass. It was only cleared of snow last week. It is the highest point on the Going-To-The-Sun Road. It is also on the Continental Divide.

Now I am going down the other side of the pass.

I didn't take many pictures on this side, the sun was in the wrong place, plus, I already had a lot of pictures. I hope you are not tired of looking at them. I have to say that this was a most spectacular day for me.

I entered Glacier on the west side, went east on the Going-To-The-Sun Road, then exited on the east side. I rode north ten miles and entered again on the Many Glaciers Road. That was the wet part of the day. It was getting too late, about 5PM, and thunderstorms had formed. There were many glaciers to be seen on this side, the north side, but the rain kept me from seeing them as well as I would have liked.

This is when I entered Canada.

On the way back south, I stopped to get a picture of the Blackfeet Nation's welcome sign.

Here's just the statue.

We are looking at the Glacier mountains from the north, seeing only the highest part of the mountains. You can see the anvil of a thunderstorm.

Here's another couple of pictures of the scenery, this is east of Glacier on a high plateau, about 4,000 to 5,000 feet elevation.

I rode until well after dark. There were no lodging establishments. I was afraid I was going to have to hobble my horse and sleep under the stars. The setting sun sky was spectacular.

Finally I arrived in Great Falls, found a room, found a chocolate shake (I am still one short), and started working on my travelogue. I rode 475 miles today. I have 6,383 total now. I will be many miles over 10,000 when I get home. I may be close to 11,000.

Tomorrow I will see niece Sparrow.