Where the Prarie meets the Mountains

At last, I have an answer to one of life's great questions. Yes, as a matter of fact, a bear DOES sh*t in the woods! Drew spotted this lovely sample just off the road. That's my size 10 shoe next to it. Quite an impressive movement!

The plan for today was to ride from Pincher Creek to St. Mary Montana. Mother Nature once again had other plans so the ride was shortened a bit. That's all part of the adventure.

Your guess is as good as mine...

We had a little bit of everything today. The morning was cool, crisp, and wind-less. The group took it's time, stopped for lots of photo ops, and just kind of relaxed. The weather deteriorated as the day wore on and we had intermittent showers leading up to the lunch stop. All-in-all it was a great morning. The mountains of Waterton National Park drew closer as we rode. Here's an example of a snow fence, which I had never seen before. We saw them all along the prairie. Apparently they act as barricades for snow drifts, and the cows hide behind them in the Winter.

Jim and I rode together over the first mountain pass that cut through the corner of the the park. Shortly after summiting and beginning the descent we heard a high-pitched squeal. A badger and a coyote shot out onto the road, fighting over a mouse, not more than 20 yards from us. They were having a full-on domestic squabble. We slammed on the brakes. I of course let Jim get closer to them than I was. :) After seeing us they immediately ended their dispute and turned their attention to us. It was quite an intense couple of seconds. The Badger turned tail and ran down off the road. The coyote stayed on his side and quickly distanced himself from us, mouse still firmly between his teeth. It all happened so fast that I couldn't reach for the camera, but the adrenaline rush lasted for a while!

We got to the lunch stop, set up right at the U.S border. Since we couldn't bring fresh fruits and veggies over we had an extra big lunch break. The real rain showed up just as we were getting started. We had a full-on flash-flood type rainstorm right there at the border. This went on for quite awhile, so we decided to call it a day for riding.

The next challenge was to make it through customs. The bikers rode to the station, figuring that would be the fastest way through. The R.V. and cars followed us. As we rode up to the checkpoint the Border Guard took pity on us and waived us up to wait under the protection of the station. I was expecting the guard to be wearing his Poker Face, but he ended up being quite a jokester. Other than Juerg forgetting to fill out his TPS Report (he apparently didn't get the memo) we all got through without incident. The rain continued to hammer us though and we were all completely soaked and frozen by the time the bikes were all loaded up.

So we took the ride down to St Mary, on the border of Glacier National Park. The town got it's name from a priest. He was coming down the mountain in the fog and saw a vision of St. Mary in the outline of the mountains. He used that as his guide to find his way down to safety. At dinner that night we saw a picture of that mountain. I could see an outline of a face, but I'd be hard-pressed to identify it as anyone in particular. Hey, whatever works. Anyway, this is a beautiful location with magnificent views of the surrounding countryside.