DAY SEVEN: We finished yesterday evening dashing to Shelby MT to beat the ever darkening storm sky. We listened to radio reports of severe storms with golf ball sized hail. In our best judgement that meant we needed a place to store our Einstein if the hail was to be a reality. Zipping into Shelby we took a room at a motel that had an underground garage. And sure enough, later in the evening the skies let loose with a terrific thunderstorm. Don't know if the hail happened, but at least all our stuff was dry and not damaged.

We moved on today to Glacier National Park, and although it was a grey day, 30 degrees colder than yesterday, and still extremely windy, we made our way into the park as far as passage was allowed before being caught in a dense fog and snowstorm. The road through Glacier was open for 18 miles, and we ohhh-ed and awe-ed our way through some of the most magnificent mountains we've ever seen. Reaching up over 9,000 ft and snow covered, each was laced with ribbon waterfalls dropping down through deep gorges to the St Mary River.

Along the way we caught a couple of signs of wildlife: a prairie dog in the sights of a stalking coyote. Stopping to take photos interrupted his dinner. We also saw a red tailed hawk. And lots and lots of tourists. There were signs warning about grizzly bears, so we avoided those trails. We did, however, get out and check out a large roiling creek as it made it way down the mountainside, passed under an impressive stone bridge, and on through the forest.

Our 4 hour sojourn through Glacier was a blessing because we only made it as far as Ft Macleod, Alberta today, and again the weather was threatening. We went to a campground only to find out that the entire area is under a flood warning. Apparently, the snow melt-off somewhere west of Calgary was flooding out a local river, the dam was nearing overflow, the dam-minders didn't open the gates soon enough and when they did it was opened too much, and a large wall of water was washing its way through Calgary and down Hwy 2. The town of Ft Macleod is expecting flood waters to arrive  sometime late this evening, and the campground wasn't accepting campers for fear of the possibility of evacuation later tonight. So we moved to local higher grounds, and found a motel that didn't expect inundation (we hope).

Meanwhile, 10,000+ Calgarians have been flooded out, with many of those homes washed away. No reports of loss of life, thankfully. But the flood waters are rushing south and east with little let up. Locals say this has happened in the past, most recently in 2008.  

Now we are rethinking our route for tomorrow because it is the melt-off from Banff and Jasper National Parks that's causing all the trouble and has flooded the road going into the parks that was to be our route. Perhaps we'll go east, take a direct route to Edmonton and be grateful we didn't get caught in the Calgary deluge. 

Tonight feels like "Camp Disappointment"
but we are not discouraged - just challenged.