I know, I'm a slacker

I am writing you from a top secret location.  Let's just say it's a mere miles from where I started this great road trip way back in April.  Yup.  I'm home.  Here's what happened between my last post and now.

[Thanks to a 90 km/hr speed limit in Jasper, Banff, and Kootenay National Parks, I stretched a half tank of gas (about 6.5 gallons) nearly 300 miles!]

[Glacier National Park's Lake McDonald]

I crossed the border back into the US just west of Glacier National Park.  I spent a glorious night at a lovely private campground outside of the park.  It was the first night in a long time when I didn't have to wear wool long underwear to bed.  What a treat.  The next day, I drove through the park and took a nice hike toward Huckleberry Mt... until I came across some fresh bear scat (about 5 miles in) and turned around before reaching the end of the trail.

[From the Huckleberry Mt trail]

[Before the hike and the close encounter with bear scat.]

I drove out of Glacier NP and headed for Billings, MT where I was to spend the night.  About 50 miles from Billings, I started to see and hear raindrops on my windshield,so I turned on my wipers.... but I couldn't get the wipers to wipe off the raindrops.  And then I realized that the little specks on my windshield were actually little, tiny bugs.  Ewww.  My bumper had about a quarter of an inch of bugs on it by the time I pulled into Billings.  Yucky!

After Billings, I raced towards Rapid City, South Dakota and the warm, generous company of my friend Mary Beth and her lovely beau.  I took in TWO (yes, two) country music shows and enjoyed the generally chill atmosphere of this cow town.

[In the Black Hills of South Dakota]

From Rapid City, I made the long and boring drive across South Dakota and into Minnesota, where I was greeted with open arms by Per and Melissa.  Per loves me.  I love him back.



[Isn't he just lovely?]



Oh yeah.  There's Per's mommy, Melissa.  She's pretty great too.  We went to a Twin's game and sat in the 12th row.  That was pretty fabulous.

Lake Louise and beyond

I haven't been to Lake Louise and Banff since I was 10 years old or so.  Spending part of Canada Day there was pretty neat (minus the hail near Lake Louise which made A LOT of noise on my little tent).

[Misty glaciers]

[Lake Louise]

[The electric fence around the campground near Lake Louise.  I had a very amusing evening with some Russian-Canadians who wanted to talk about English soccer....]

[Outside the town of Banff where I stopped at McDonald's to use their WiFi (did you know that almost every McD's has WiFi?).  The place was packed and some folks had the NERVE to ask the manager to turn off coverage of the Duke and Duchess's visit to Canada in favor of cartoons.  How RUDE.  As a non-customer, I didn't feel I could protest.  Thankfully the manager said he couldn't turn the channel....]