Northward Bound

Thursday, July 2nd:

Started at 8 a.m. instead of 6 a.m. like I planned, which meant I hit Denver right at the beginning of rush hour. By the time the sun was beginning to set, I had reached Wheaton Wyoming, where I discovered that despite TMobile's coverage map assuring me that I had service through the first half of Canada, I really didn't.

Found an open WiFi, and messaged my wife on Facebook that everything was fine, and found a campsite. Setup camp, ate dinner, and went to bed.

Friday, July 3rd:

Woke up at 5 a.m., packed up my gear and was ready to ride by 6 a.m. but there wasn't anybody at the campsite office to pay for my stay. Took a picture of the contact list on the door so I could send them the payment.

Rode until I got to Casper, where I cound a Walmart and bought a sim card for Verizon after verifying that it would work with my Galaxy S5... only it didn't, and I spent 3 hours finding that out. So now I have a prepaid Verizon phone that lets me call and text, but no internet!

Made my way to Great Falls Montana, where I stayed in a Days Inn so I could take a shower and wash my clothes before crossing over into Canada - the ride had been very hot, and I wanted to be presentable when I convinced the border guard that I wasn't a bum :)

While Great Falls wasn't a small town, you wouldn't have guessed it by the number of restaurants that were closed by 10 p.m. So I bought some groceries at Albertsons, and headed to the hotel to use their laundry... which had closed while I was out. At least I was clean.

Saturday, July 4th:

Got up at 6 a.m., and went downstairs to wash my clothes. Ate breakfast and loaded my gear while I waited, and got on the road by 8 a.m. and was at the border by 10:30 or so. The crossing was simple... talked to the agent at a drive through window, and just had to answer a few questions.

Crossing the border, I realized my speedometer didn't have any km/hr labels, so had to rely on my GPS program know how fast I was going. It was kinda fun to see a speed limit of 110 at first :)

The biggest change, however, was having to choose the amount of gas - the difference in currency, the use of liters instead of gallons, and the fact that my bike gas neither a gas guage or consistent gas mileage meant that I didn't have the foggiest idea of how to prepay at the pump.

I like how Canada has the chip reader in all of their credit card machines - I'll miss that when I return to the states.

Leaving Calgary, I hit a rain storm - pretty hard, too. Unlike Montana, Canada was already pretty cool, and the moisture was definitely not welcome. Stopped at a diner to get warmed up, and get some food.

Back on the road, I was back in sunshine about an hour or two later, and got mostly dried out. Found a campsite before the sun set, and setup camp. However, I'm far enough north that I didn't have to worry... the sky was still lit around midnight.