Day Nine--Shelby, Montana, to Calgary, Alberta

It has rained all night!  The wind blew and the rain fell until probably 3:00 or 4:00 a.m.  In neighboring communities, people got flooded out and roads are closed.  I called AAA for a tow truck to get us out of the mud, and thankfully, they responded quickly.  The folks at AAA were concerned that I had a trailer attached to the truck, because they only covered the truck itself.  They indicated that the trailer would require "RV" coverage, which I had not purchased.  But I couldn't detach the trailer, because of the problems discussed yesterday, and besides, the mud was so deep that I wouldn't be able to use the truck to pull the trailer out if they towed the truck out by itself.  So I told them I would pay the difference between the pickup towing charge, which they would cover, and the "pickup-attached-to-the-trailer" charge.  When the tow-truck driver showed up shortly thereafter, he simply hitched to the front of the pickup and pulled out both the truck and trailer very easily.  (He had a big truck!)  I didn't know whether he was aware of the differential charge or not, until he said, "If AAA calls and asks about the tow, tell them you detached the trailer, because they won't pay for both of them."  Well, I wasn't sure I could do that, because it wasn't true, but luckily when they called, they simply asked, "Did you get towed out?"  And I didn't have to say anything more.  We drove on north, and about a half-hour later, we reach the Canadian border.  It took about 30 minutes to move through the border crossing and then we headed north to Calgary on a four-lane divided highway that was essentially the same as the U.S. interstate we had been driving on.

We reached Calgary and drove through to our campground at Calaway RV Park.  It's my first driving trip to Canada, and the cities and towns we encounter are often ones that I have never heard of.  Lethbridge, for example, is a city in southern Alberta, which, if it were in Oklahoma, would be the fifth largest city!   Nice town, with every kind of amenity you would expect.  And, of course, Calgary itself is a large city whose most famous attribute, arguably, is the Calgary Stampede, which will occur during the first two weeks of July.  It may just be the world's largest rodeo.  This is definitely cowboy country, with horses in all the pastures.

It rained again this morning, and we have learned that between 3 and 4 inches of rain fell in Shelby, and even more in Glacier National Park to the west of where we had been.  Calgary TV stations are talking about the flooding that occurred last year on this same date, and it displaced tens of thousands of people, the most damaging flood in Canadian history.  It would really be nice to get out of this weather into something warm and sunny.