(07/14/12) A Sunset Cruise with Animatronic Animals

After last night’s storm, we awoke to a soggy day. It never really rained over the course of the day, but the skies spat at us from time to time. So, we spent our time doing a hodgepodge of things. The first thing we did was attempt to locate some Wi-Fi so I could post my musings from the last few days and upload some new pictures. We drove around town with the iPad on “detect” to see if any network might let us on. This led us to a very long discussion.

Is it wrong to piggyback on someone’s Wi-Fi? My first response is no. It is simple enough and easy enough to set up a password for your wireless. It is also easy to hire someone to do this for you. If you neither protect your signal nor pay someone to do so, one could conclude that you do not care to do so. However, if you do not mind sharing your wireless service with passersby, does your provider deserve to know you are giving away product for free? I have a hunch that somewhere in your contract/ agreement with your provider it states that you will use it for personal/ home use only. Is it morally wrong? George does not think so. He considers an open network an invitation to use the signal, but not to poke around on the storage of that network. I do believe it is wrong. If you leave your bike in your yard at your house and someone borrows it to use until they are done with it and did not ask, that bike could be reported as stolen. I know that a bike is a resource that cannot be used by multiple people at the same time, so it does not compare apples to apples against wireless internet. Before the discussion got heated, we compromised and found a place that served lunch and provided internet access (with a purchase), Pearl’s Café. Such good food! I posted a review on tripadvisor.com, which I rarely take the time to do. The Chipotle mayonnaise they use for sandwiches was yummy! George polished off a huge plate of French bread French toast with blueberry compote and fresh whipped cream.

We procured our tickets early for the sunset cruise on the International, a riverboat by appearance, with a diesel engine. We then drove up to Red Rock Canyon, parked and walked down to check it out. On warmer summer days, this place is probably a madhouse! A natural stream runs through a red rock canyon, carved over time. Kids could climb the rocks and swim in the accumulated pools of water. It was neat, but too chilly today for us (there were a ton of kids in the water though). 

After that, we drove out the Akamina Parkway to its terminus at Cameron Lake. We walked to the lake’s edge and found accommodations beyond our wildest expectations. There was a dock, a snack bar that served drinks and food, bathrooms, an educational pavilion and a boathouse where you could rent watercraft by the hour. We are rapidly coming to the conclusion that in the US, a National Park is preserved as a wilderness and commerce is allowed to intrude but only as absolutely necessary. In Canada, we have termed these sister areas National Wilderness Recreation areas, despite the Canadians calling them National Parks. There are so many amenities and opportunities that would be laughable in the US. Can US citizens picture or accept power boats on Crater Lake, mountain bikes in the Redwood Forest or a village, complete with restaurants, stores, motels, a spa and gas stations dropped in Joshua Tree? The Canadians have these parks and as a nation they choose to use them differently than we do. Not wrong, not bad, just different, but it definitely takes some getting used to. Don’t get me wrong, it was sweet to have internet five minutes away, but seeing people in fancy evening clothing walking the sidewalks to dinner was bewildering. And the flip side of having those amenities, they were extremely pricey, putting them out of range for the average person.

Cameron Lake was gorgeous, clear as a bell, but with more muck on the bottom. The lake was stocked with trout back in the 1930s, but since the 1970s, Parks Canada has not continued that practice. Today, some descendants of those original trout remain in the lake and fisherman can angle for them as long as they catch and release. If you rent a small motorboat, a canoe, a kayak or a pedal boat, you have full lake access, but Parks Canada asks that you stay away from the southern shore of the lake. Bears like to browse the bushes for berries and bask in the sunshine. If you get too close, they will chase you and apparently, bears can swim. I chuckled that the situation was summed up as, “this is our end of the lake and that is their end of the lake”.  I’d love to know how the bears were told of this arrangement!

We hopped back in the car, zipped back to camp, grabbed our coats, pullovers and a quick snack, and we drove into town to find a parking spot. We each chewed two orange-flavored Dramamine tablets on the way to the boat. Yuck! Bleech! So gross; enough said. Neither of us wanted to get boat sick and we had noticed that the lake had picked up swells of 2-3 feet over the course of the day and then settled out. We were lucky enough for our ride that the lake was either smooth as glass or was rippled, no more than 6 inches. We sat on the top deck of the boat and listened to our guide narrate our journey. His grandparents ended up being on the boat tonight, which was cute. The boat runs four cruises throughout the day, 10 AM, 2 PM, 4 PM and 7 PM. For the first three cruises, there is a customs official at the bottom of Upper Waterton Lake as well as a seasonal US Park Ranger, both of whom help process the hikers from Glacier National Park (US) into Waterton Park (Canada). Before 9/11, a person of any nationality was able to use this as a port of entry, if they didn't mind the 30 miles hike one-way. In the years after 9/11, this port of entry can only be used by Canadian and US citizens. We had brought our passports, hoping to get stamped in and out (cancellations) but as we pulled up to the small dock on the far side of the lake, we found out from the captain's announcement that it was not to be. We were allowed off the boat and we jumped up and down on the American soil a bit before reboarding the International for our return trip to Waterton Village.

All three of the earlier cruises this day had seen wildlife, specifically mammals. Moose will stand in the shallows eating plants growing on the lake bottom and have even been seen swimming and diving down 15-20 feet to feed. Bears are also spotted swimming from one side of the lake to the other. Upper Wateron Lake was easily a half a mile wide at its’ narrowest point. Our guide explained that bears have such a tremendous amount of fat that swimming to them in these 50 degree waters, is no big deal. Every other cruise that day had seen a swimming bear. (I googled this when we got back to some Wi-Fi and there are no pictures of bears swimming in Waterton Lake on Google. I think we were HAD -- stupid Americans fell for it, you owe me $20!) I waited patiently, camera in hand for our turn because I really, really wanted to see this. George sat with his arm around me and we waited and watched. Finally on the way back, someone spotted something – a Bald Eagle. Not what I had in mind – warm blooded, fur, live babies – sorry birdbrain, you’ve been rejected. So when we pulled back up to the dock after two hours of searching, I asked the guide if he could cue the animatronic bear for us. Poor kid had no idea what we were talking about.

George and I often discuss how fortunately we have been viewing wildlife. While in Yellowstone last summer, there were only two critters that eluded us: moose and a tundra swan. We were able to locate many others: bison, elk, mule deer, pronghorn antelope, black bears, grizzlies, pika, yellow-bellied marmots, otters, a beaver, chipmunks, a badger, wolves, coyotes, fish (the waters were very clear), and many birds (bald eagles, golden eagles, sandhill cranes, woodpeckers, herons, pelicans, many kinds of ducks, etc.) With this good fortune and prolific list from that trip, one could assume that we would be content. Nope! We now search out the animals that have eluded us. When chatting between the two of us, we have our “own” language, as all couples do, words that only the two of you understand the meaning of. A “mooooz” is a moose. And we both would really like to see one! When I was a teenager, my family took a trip to Yellowstone (and other places) and when we exited the park, I remember pulling to the side of the road so my sister could see a moose cow and her calf browsing the vegetation. I just loved their ears and tall, knobby legs. When George and I went to Bear World (drive through animal park) last year in Idaho, they had both a tundra swan and a moose but we agreed that it does not count unless they are in the wild. Back to the animatronic animals!

We are both convinced that one of the lesser known government conspiracies (the Roswell coverup, who shot President Kennedy, etc.) is that many of the our national park animals are actually animatronic. We are sure of this because occasionally when we have been watching them for extended periods, they do goofy, ridiculous, unnatural things over and over, and therefore are malfunctioning. For example, the big horn sheep was saw that bashed his own face (not head) into the ground not once but twice! Another example: the bear that sat down on the ground and looked up into the distance for more than a few seconds, allowing all of us to get the perfect picture. Lastly, I offer you the case of the bull elk, who lay in full view of the roadside pullout and slowly turned his head (and magnificent antlers) from side to side, surveying his domain. No real animal would ever lay near a roadside, pose for pictures or bash its face into the ground. We rest our case!

After our boat ride, where as you can see from the recently uploaded pictures, I figured out how to get my digital camera to switch from color to black-and-white and sepia, we wandered back past the village eateries in the hopes that one might still be open. It was still light out, like 7 PM Maryland light out, but the stores closed up at 9 PM. This made us feel like every night was Sunday. We found one store still open and what did it sell? Hand dipped ice cream and fudge at The Big Scoop. What a dinner it was!