From Canada to Montana

Jane Reporting for 19th September

Lots of straight driving yesterday (19th September) as we left Calgary and heading back into the US to drive through Montana to Great Falls.

We were apparently driving across from Vancouver under the rain cloud because suddenly all that is gone and we had a cool start to a lovely clear blue day with miles and miles of snow on the mountains behind us.  Poor Lyn spent most her time with her head swivelled like an owl to watch the snow-covered mountains recede.

Looking back as we leave Calgary

The funny thing about photos compared to what the eye (or brain) sees is that people seem to be able to mentally dismiss the foreground and see the mountains in the distance as much larger and more significant than they appear in the photo.  Many of our photos ended up as miles of paddocks and a thin strip that might have been snow-covered mountains but might have easily been clouds.  Unless we used the camera zoom, but that was asking a lot from the camera; zoomed, moving vehicle, taken through dirty glass.  Anyway, these are something like what we saw.

The mountain views as we drove south

We had one place to stop yesterday - another aviation museum.  This one was a small one when compared to the Evergreen Aviation and Space Museum at McMinnville but it had a Lancaster bomber there that (with the addition of a blue hard hat) we were allowed to scramble about it.

Pilot Gary

The Bomber Command Museum of Canada at Nanton was certainly well worth the visit for that alone, but it also had second-hand aviation books for sale (proceeds to the museum) which we not only thought was a great idea, but we found a couple that just had to come along with us on our trip.

Lancaster

Recruiting posters

  
After driving the receptionist man mad with asking for different t-shirts in every conceivable size we eventually left him in peace and headed on towards the US border and our destination for the night.

As we drove along the long straight roads Gary became fascinated wit the snow-capped mountain ahead of us, insisting we check the map and tell him what it was.  There was absolutely nothing on our road atlas that t could be but that took some time and effort to establish.  There was a basic difference of opinion; huge and far away or small and much closer.

Gary was right with the latter option and the helper in the Travel Information and Interpretive Centre we stopped said that she wasn't sure but thought they were the Sweet Grass Hills.  They looked like mountains to me, but by the time we got nearer they did start looking like much lower, more rolling hills than I expected.  Odd though, that they appeared out of an otherwise flat plain like that.

Sweet Grass Hills

Also at the centre were some dinosaur exhibits including this chappie standing guard outside:

Dinosaurs roaming

And as you walked toward the front doors there were a number of quotes about travel set into the pavers.  Following one set along Lyn and I discovered we had moved from the philosophy of travel to the reality. It certainly got a laugh from us.

From philosophy to reality