Our brief stay in the Canadian Rockies finally came to an end. We said goodbye to our dusty little campground and headed to the Chief Mountain border crossing.
This time the officer came to the passenger door to interrogate us. Joani tried to open the little window which didn't work very well and he said "just open the door". I had put the coach in neutral and set the brake, but he wanted the engine turned off. It seems like everyone is anti-idle anymore. His questions seemed to put Joani on edge a bit. There should have been no reason - maybe there was some left over celery in the refrigerator, but it was bought in the U.S. before we left. After the, now usual, do you have any guns, tobacco or cash on board we were on our way.
We were prepared to see a few cows, but in all, sprinkled along the road, we encountered over 50.
The yellow fields are canola crops. 52,000 Canadian farmers grow canola.
Our planned route took us south on US 89 all the way to Great Falls, Montana, but the winding, hilly, narrow road with no shoulder made us rethink that. We headed over on Hwy 44 to Interstate 15 as soon as we could and finished the drive (202.4 miles, 69,174.6 total) in the Flying J Travel Plaza parking lot at around 2:00.
After fueling up both the coach and the car, we pulled into the overnight area next to a big rig flatbed. His generator was running to power the air conditioner. We assumed he was napping. It was early enough we decided to unhook the car and explore Great Falls a bit. It was good to be back in the U.S. for groceries as well as fuel. When we passed a Fuddruckers it was also pretty easy to talk ourselves into a big fat burger with all of the toppings.
When we returned, I re-attached the car so we would be ready to leave in the morning. Our neighbor still appeared to be sleeping, but his generator had that steady kind of drone that made it much easier to sleep without our fan running. When morning rolled around I started thinking about how long our neighbor's genset had been running with no sign of him. I finally decided to ask one of the truckers at the pump just how long was normal. I was told eighteen hours was not normal, so I went inside to see if they might want to check on him. I have to say by this time I was imaging some pretty gruesome scenarios as did the station maintenance guys. They were a bit leery about pounding on a strangers door, but did it anyway. When no one answered another guy came over and they climbed up to look in. The cab was empty. If the owner had something wrong at least it was somewhere else and we hit the road! I hope everything turned out OK.
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