Road Trip - Take 3

What a trip! (See Tetons & Glacier (1 & 1.5), respectively if you missed those and want to read about those adventures.) We finally made it to Canada - day 7 of our journey. Woot! I'll admit by that time I was pretty mentally and emotionally exhausted by thinking about the potential presence of bears everywhere, so it wasn't exactly thrilling to know that our campsite had spotted two grizzly bears nearby earlier that morning...

(Crossing the border was fun too - I hadn't signed my passport, which I then promptly had to do, and when asked if we were planning on leaving anything in Canada, I replied, "Not if we can help it." (One day my mouth might get me in trouble, but I just couldn't help it.) And I also kinda lied about the bear spray we had in the backseat - technically he didn't call it by its name; though, he listed everything else similar in the book (e.g. pepper spray). Oops.)

But it sure was beautiful in Banff, which must do a crushing business during the ski season. The town is set up for such tourism, you can tell.

Once we set up our tent, we went for a hike nearby and then got dinner in the town. We walked around for a little bit afterwards, making room for ice cream. (That was an amazing life choice...as always.) And then we were ready to call it a night. The next morning we got up, packed up the tent, and headed for another close hike before traveling up to Lake Louise (a must see in Banff, apparently) and finally starting our long journey home...

But before we get to the long journey home, here are a few pictures:

On Monday, after visiting Lake Louise, we traveled to Swiftcurrent, where we spent the night. The following morning, we got up pretty early (though not as early as we intended because we were one time zone over than we thought) so that we would have time to stop at Teddy Roosevelt National Park for a hike before making it to Fargo.

We found Cracker Barrel!

The moon was so big!

For our final leg of the journey, we pretty much drove straight through...starting at 4 a.m. We were determined to beat Chicago traffic. And we did!

And the best part of the trip?

1. Bear spray remained unopened!

2. I added 3 national parks on my poster as places I've been.

And now I'm at Notre Dame for two short weeks. I'm excited to graduate, but it's all bittersweet because this is one of the best groups of people I have ever had the privilege of knowing and we'll all be soon heading our separate ways. Going to try to enjoy it while it's here, though...