Jacob's Road Trip Ramblings ... Crossing the Boarder Edition

It's been another few days of whirlwind adventures, and it's time to check in once again. I hope you are all enjoying our travel log, and that it's been as fun for you to read as it has been for us to write! Today marks one week down...two more to go! On Tuesday we hop on the cruise and set sailed for Alaska. But enough about that. Let me tell you about the past couple days.

On Thursday, after Yellowstone the previous day, we really spent a short day driving up through Montana in order to put ourselves closer to Glacier National Park. Wednesday night we made it to Livingston, Montana, and that's where we started from the following morning. We drove up through Bozeman and Helena, finally ending up in Great Falls in the evening. From there we just got dinner and tried to rest up for the next couple days.



Friday was the big day to go see Glacier! Given our time constraints, we were actually only able to drive through the park from West to East. And I use the word "only" very loosely. We drove through the park on Going-To-The-Sun Road. It was a harrowing drive up the mountains on a tiny little road. It was a two-way road...in some places. On one side we had the mountains towering above us, and on the other, sheer cliffs! That alone was exciting. But even better were the views. As far as natural scenic beauty, Glacier surpassed anything I'd seen on the trip so far. The mountains and forests and clouds and snow were indescribable. Between the road and the photo stops, it took us two hours to drive forty miles! Once out of the park, it was just a hop, skip and a jump up to the border of Canadia...I mean...Canada! After crossing, it was straight up to Calgary and crashing for the night.



And that brings us to Saturday, the one-week mark of our family adventure! Today we pretty much started out with an hour delay on the trans-Canadian highway. After we got through that, we drove through the quaint little town of Banff. It's nestled in a little valley with the mountains rising up on all sides! Once we got through Banff, we drove just up the road to Lake Louise. Even though it was crowded it was still well worth the stop. The lake is basically situated just in between two towering, forested peaks, with huge glacial snows in the background, the lake itself is a brilliant blue. We learned this is because the glaciers grind the rock beneath them to dust. This dust then flows with the water down into the lake, and dissolves there. This dust, or rock flour, in the water absorbs all colors of the spectrum except the blue and turquoise that get reflected back to our eyes. Isn't God's creation incredible? After the lake, our day was fairly uneventful. We got stuck in another huge delay on the highway and had to wait for another. Two or three hours. Once through that though, we drove straight on through British Columbia until we reached a town at about 1:30 am. So now we sit, more than halfway across BC, and ready to head to Vancouver!