July 4, 2014 - Back to the USA

Another beautiful morning with the sun shining and a few puffy clouds greeted us early today.  We needed to ride about 400 miles so an early start was the thing to do.  I was so happy to see the sun.  I did put on my heated liner as there was a slight chill in the air.  We left our lovely lodging in Jasper, fueled up, and headed out.

This is the view leaving our lodging.

We got on the highway and headed south.  Eric snapped a few pics of the scenery on our departure.  It was simply stunning.  For the first few hours we had the highway pretty much to ourselves.  The road surface went from awesome to crap and back to awesome.  We did spy several deer just three miles out of town but they were busy having brekkie.

There were so many lovely views we never would have made it out of Jasper National Park if we stopped at all of them.

Traffic began to increase as the morning wore on.  Fortunately most of the traffic was headed north and we were going south.

We stopped for brekkie in the park which was nice but pricey, hahahaha.  Man, I can't get over the prices for stuff up here.  $4.25 for a small glass of milk?  Oh, well, we're on vacation.

We made a quick detour up to Lake Louise and the Chateau but unfortunately, it was a holiday and everybody wanted to go there.  No place to park and nothing but a bazillion people.  I don't do crowds well so we went through the parking lot and out the other side without stopping.

No matter, we did stop at the Continental Divide for a break and took some photos.  It was a pleasant stop.

While at this stop, we saw this...

These folks were from Switzerland.  I think they shipped their RV to the US and purchased the Jeep here.  The RV had European plates but the Jeep had US plates, Florida, I think.  Interesting. 

We motored on and the day got warmer.  At this stop, I removed the jacket liner and put on my summer gloves.  At our next stop, I opened up all the vents in the jacket and pants.  It was about 86 degrees and windy.  Our cold for the day was 40.

We made several rest stops along the way.  Each had spectacular scenery.

We came around a curve in the road and found these guys!

We had yet another rest stop.  This was a lovely roadside rest stop with a lake, picnic tables and tons of charm!

 Eric is taking care of business, well not really.  There was no cell signal, lol.

We had crossed the border back into the US and rode about 20 miles when we found this scenic stop.

Riding along we spied a couple of guys on the side of the road waving flags at us!!!  What??  Yup, it was Tyer and Skyeler Zimmerman flagging us in!!!  What fun.  Shortly after that we pulled into the Zimmerman driveway and had a wonderful reception.

Now, we're all settled in and enjoying our visit for the next two days.

I'm happy and sad at the same time.  Our journey is almost over but not quite!   We still have a few days of adventure left and then we'll recap and do an epilogue.  So, stay tuned folks for the last few days of our adventure.

Gotta run for now,  Skyeler is starting to shoot off the fireworks and I don't want to miss it!

Cheers,

Cletha

PS - Saw one black bear, several mountain goats and some sheep today along with one or two squirrels!