Mother Nature again blessed us with another sunny travel day. We are now truly heading east. We entered Mountain Daylight Savings Time yesterday and lost that hour we gained a while back. The good news is the day’s are still getting longer.

Shortly after leaving Invermere we entered Kootenay National Park. The scenery was truly spectacular with glacial rivers flowing near the road and the jagged peaks of the Canadian Rockies in the distance. There’s some snow on the highest peaks, but we suspect that they would have been covered in snow 20 years ago. The color contrast of the bare top of the mountains, the deep green of the pine trees, and the grassy green slopes of the mountains makes Peggy wish she could paint or maybe someday make a landscape quilt. At one point, the grassy sides of the road were bordered with such a straight line of pine trees that it looked like someone’s garden.

As we crossed the Continental Divide, we left British Columbia and entered Alberta. Peggy noted that during our first trip to BC 20 years ago we encountered rain daily. A few years ago, when we were tent camping in BC, it was so chilly and rainy that instead of continuing west to Vancouver we detoured south to Eastern Washington State. On this trip we didn’t have a drop of rain in BC. The snowfall in the mountains has been below normal the last few years. As we continued our eastern trek, we traveled through a part of Banff National Park. Since we’ve been to Banff before, we didn’t stop. We did get very nostalgic as we drove past Canmore. On our first cross-country camping trip 20 years ago, we stopped there. We camped in the city campground in overflow tent camping. The longest running Canadian folk festival was happening while we were there. It was a fun time. We also camped there a few years ago. Sadly, the city has grown so much that it’s lost its small town appeal to us. We waved and took a picture of the old campground as we drove past.

A few miles east of Canmore, there was a short burst of heavy rain. It was the first serious rain we have seen since leaving Tennessee. About 20 miles east of Canmore, we left the mountains and entered the flat lands. The farther east we drove, the flatter the landscape became, the further you can see and the straighter the roads become. From here until we reach Ontario, it’s going to be pretty dull driving.

We decided that Medicine Hat was a good place to stop for the night. We found a neighborhood restaurant within walking distance to our hotel and had a delightful supper. After several hours in the “saddle” it is good to walk some.

Well the sandman is visiting us so it’s time to wrap this up and get some shut eye