Valley View

I've been pretty busy with work the last couple nights and haven't been able to update my blog, so here's a quick recap of the last couple days.

We left the campground in Montana and headed across the mountains to I-15 to the border. Man was it cold! I asked dad to go faster to try to get it over with, but of course at 70mph plus a strong side wind you get even greater wind chill! We eventually stopped and I put on even more

clothing - I was then warm and it was good practice for later on when the low in Montana was higher than the High in Alberta.

We crossed the border at Sweetgrass MT. It was not at all what I expected. Kinda reminded me of a ski-lodge or mountain pass. Just a cluster of buildings around the crossing. I had all my "papers" with me but all I needed was to show my passport and have them photograph my license plate, then I was off. I reset my speedometer to Kilometers and off I went. It was weird to be running triple digit speeds (only did so once before on the trip - while passing a truck in Colorado and that wasn't much fun since the road was grooved and the bike wobbled badly)

Everyone in Canada seems to drive well over the posted speeds. In 1000 miles so far up here I haven't seen a police car with anyone pulled over. When I'm leading I go a little faster than the speed limit, and Dad runs his cruise control at a little over too. I don't like having a solid stream of cars and 34 wheeler trucks (two 53' trailers in tandem (!))

We stopped for the night in Airdrie, AB and had dinner at a nearby restaurant. I ordered a burger and fries and they asked if I wanted Poutien instead. I was not aware of this, and asked the waitress what it is... She brought it for me and I ate it and later looked it up - it is a Quebec thing - French Fries with fresh cheese curd melted by hot brown gravy. Probably very low calories... When I checked my bill later I saw that they charged me $2 for the gravy and curds, and then at the hotel checked my credit card website and it looks like they charged us for the drinks we didn't receive! I'm not sure if it's worth arguing with the credit card company though over $5.00.

After dinner I went to the local Walmart Supercentre. I wanted to get a few items and figured it would be good to go somewhere familiar to save time... so much for that - all of the products and brands were different from what I'm used to at home so I had to do some "shopping" I rode my scooter back to the hotel in the last bit of daylight at 10pm! Sunrise has been around 5 and sunset at a little after 10. The days will only get longer as we go.

We left the hotel quickly on Monday to try to avoid storms, and it worked. We managed to ride

most of the day with no rain, but it was quite cold. I wore several layers of clothes and was dry.

We stayed the night in the Valley View Motor

Inn. It rained hard overnight and we will be riding through mud this morning.

Here are a few photos - I will add descriptions later.

~Ron