Day 31: Whitefish MT - Calgary AB

The Pole at last!!! The prize of three centuries, my dream and ambition for twenty-three years, Mine at last....

Also schreibt Robert Peary in his diary when he claimed to have reached the North Pole.  Or rather on a loose sheet of paper which he stuck in his diary afterwards.  Yes, mate....  Anyway, today I had a North Pole moment:

I finally reached the summit of Logan Pass at the third attempt; in 2009 they closed the road over the pass the day before I arrived in Whitefish and last year they closed it because burny fiery DETH. This year they reopened it after burny fiery DETH on Tuesday.  Harrumble¹!  It lives in the middle of Glacier National Park, which is also dead good:

Lake McDonald

Mountains, USAnia, Thursday

The glaciers are mostly shrinking like a badly-washed woolly jumper and someone in the Trump Junta as slipped up, since there's still a reference to man-made climate change on one of the info boards near Jackson Glacier.  Could be because the park is joined at the hip to Waterton Lakes National Park over the border, creating an "International Peace Park" (sic) and the Canadians wouldn't let them get away with it.

Jackson Glacier

The east side of the park is pretty good too.  Lake Saint Mary, for e.g., and MOAR mountains.

Saint Mary Lake

And the Saint Mary River, complete with fierce and disorderly duck-sized birds fighting each other.

The fierce and disorderly duck-sized birds on the Saint Mary River.
Click to embiggen and you may find them looking somewhat grebe-like.

On leaving the park I could have gone haring straight off up US-89, which turns into Alberta's Highway 2 when it crosses the border, but went in search of interest up a side road.  This passes Chief Mountain:

and then crosses the border.  As can be seen from the photos taken in the park, USAnia was sunny and basking under shiny blue skies.  On the Canuckistani side: this.

The border is just around that corner...

Literally two Shitbox Dodge lengths into Canuckistan before rain, thunder and lightning.  It didn't last long but a fellow snoutcast told me just now that this kind of weather - viz. 10C and raining - is not typical of southern Alberta at this time of year.

Many road signs today bearing the word "TWP".  As any fule kno, "twp" is Welsh for "daft" or "stupid", so this threw me for a while until, with Emily's assistance, I worked out that it's short for "Township".  And I have to confess I'd completely forgotten about the best-named World Heritage Site in the history of all things evvah until I saw it on a signpost:

The name derives from the legend - possibly concocted as a joke at the expense of the credulous White Man - that a young Blackfoot brave wanted to watch his fellow hunters driving buffalo off a cliff, thereby killing them utterly to DETH, from below.  You can guess the rest. They charge fifteen dollars to get in but the T-shaped shirts were half-price.

The cliff in question

It may not look much, but in its heyday it was about 20m high instead of the current 10 - it shrank due to rock falls - and even from ten metres a half-tonne cow landing on your noggin would do you a power of no good.

After that it back onto Highway 2 and straight up to Calgary.  Which starts about 45 km from where I am now, practically next door to the airport, and was having a rush hour when I arrived chiz.  Tomorrow I shall not be moseying off into the countryside, partly because it's obviously a long way away but mostly because it's stereotypical Prairie Province of Canada™.  And I don't have to leave here until 2 pm anyway, so I can do some orderly repacking, refill That Shitbox Dodge with motor-spirit and confess my sins to Hertz before getting in the shiny metal tube back to That London, that they have now.

1: This Unit has been listening to all five series of "Bleak Expectations" this week.