Day 129: Back to the Lower 48

August 21, 2014

HAPPY ANNIVERSARY to Barry & Donna and Max & Anne. Crazy that our traveling, caching, and hiking buddies have the same anniversary date as us, just married one year less time. It's great that both couples are married to their best friends. 32 years for us, 31 for them.

It was 51 degrees this morning with rain when we headed out of Okotoks. Yesterday we drove with the heater on all day. Today it was heater on again but not all day. We left early to avoid the traffic heading in to Calgary to work and later we stopped at a roadside pull off to have breakfast. Then it was on toward the border. It was another rainy, gray morning and it rained almost all day quitting just before we arrived at our destination of Havre, MT.

We had our last border crossing today when we crossed back into the USA at Sweet Grass, Montana. We counted up and this crossing makes 28 times we have crossed the border on this trip. Those passports got a lot of handling. Most of those were crossing between Stewart and Hyder where the border agents knew us on sight before we left. This crossing was even easier than the one leaving the US back in May. It took maybe 3 minutes and then the agent welcomed us back home. It is really nice to be back! Nothing against Canada, but we are just more comfortable here.

Sign as we entered Montana. We also saw lots of white markers and wondered if the 70 mph speed limit on two-lane roads with very narrow shoulders was a contributing factor.

After crossing the border we stopped to fuel up Fred. Boy that was a nice change! It has been a while since we paid less than $4.00/gallon so $3.79 was great! After that it was miles and miles of flat farm land. What a change from the mountains we have lived in the past 3 months. Took us a little by surprise. As we were arriving in Havre we could see some small “mountains” in the distance. Looked on the atlas and found there are some small mountains call the Bear Paws in this part of Montana. Who knew. We had to google it because we never heard of those mountains. So great to have our internet back. Here in Montana they are harvesting the crops today that they were planting in May when we drove through.

Tractor jam as we entered Havre

We will leave Havre tomorrow and hope to be in Theodore Roosevelt National Park in North Dakota by supper time.