After all that adventure yesterday, I figured the girls were due a little bit of rest and relaxation. Noelle and I enjoyed coffee while she worked on laundry and I worked on the blog. Victoria was both sleeping and reclining at the same time.
Today is getaway day for us. Banff was great, but we still have 3 more parks to see. We have about 6 hours of driving back south into the good ole USA, so let’s get going. We left right at checkout time.
We were running a little low on gas and I don’t want to be on the side of the road with the bears around, so we stopped by this cute little gas station. The one thing not cute about it was they didn’t take cards at the pump and you have to tell the attendant how much you wanted ahead of time. Gas is 1.80 a liter and I’m at 1/4 tank. Quick gas math…$50 worth? That got me to half a tank, which hopefully should be enough to get back to cheaper gas.
We drove back south today the beautiful snow covered mountains again and transitioned to more forresty lake area. They have tons of huge lakes for sure. Passed a boat rental place and I resisted pulling over and grabbing a ski boat.
Around lunch time, we stopped in a small town called Radium Springs that had another outdoor pool heated by warm spring water. Not sure if I’d want to bathe in a pool with Radium in the name – you might come out glowing. We ate at a place called the Snack Bar – Burgers and chicken tenders again that were pretty good, filled up on gas at $1.75 a liter and continued on.
We made it another hour or two through more valley and hill type country before the girls hourly bladder fill and made a quick stop at a Canadian rest stop. It didn’t look like much, but Lydia said it was the cleanest the she’d ever seen, which was enough for Victoria to be interested in using it also.
After one last construction stop where the guy holding the stop sign told us his life story, we finally hit the U.S. border. I wanted to get back home at some point and didn’t want to have the car searched for contraband, so I had been preparing the girls for this moment. “Make sure you talk loud and don’t act like you are being kidnapped even if you don’t like hiking.”. We were the only car in line and pulled right up to unfriendly, very serious border patrol agent. I handed over my passports and be called out everybody and received prompt attendance replies from everyone. He wanted to know where I had been and where we were going, and I forgot the names of everything and just replied “National Parks”. He them nailed me the hardest question of all – “Did you buy anything in Canada?”. Which I immediately answered “No” because I didn’t buy anything that he’d care about unless he was interested in prices for lululemon for his grandkids, but probably sounds a little suspicious. Noelle corrected me though that we did buy groceries but I quickly interjected “no fruits or vegetables.”. He snickered to himself for a second, handed back our passports and said we were free to go! Woohoo – back to America, miles per hour and gallons of gas!
A short drive through the land of the free and home of the brave and we arrived at our lodge – Cedar Creek Lodge in Columbia falls. It looked nice, but I was a little confused. I thought it was actually in the national Park and this one was in the town. It was next to a park, with a tennis court and playground, not that seems like a stretch from the marketing team. We were only 20 minutes from glacier national Park entrance so it’s fine, but strike 1.
We tried to checkin at 5pm, a good hour after checkin time and was told that the room wasn’t ready yet. Strike 2. He did offer me cookies while we waited another 30 minutes, so we’ll call it 1.5 strikes. Then I found out that they had a pool and hot tub plus a free Continental breakfast. Let’s just go back to even.
We got into the room, which was nice for our purposes. We were all hungry so I left the girls and went to get food as a true hunter gatherer father should. My first choice of grilled cheese and soup food truck was not at the location they listed on the map, so I switched to pizza instead. It took 45 minutes, but I had a beer and unwound.
After dinner, the girls wanted to swim, so we suited up and went to the pool. No slide for the girls, but they had fun anyway and Noelle and I soaked in the hot tub. We should be recovered to hit it hard tomorrow. Let’s see what Glacier National Park has to offer!
