Friday July 11, 2025 Great Falls MT to Prince Of Wales Hotel (Waterton Lakes National Park in Alberta)

The hotel was great for a Days Inn. Looks like it must have been renovated. We got a couple of yogurts for breakfast since we were still full from dinner last night at Appleby’s (the great local pizza place had a 25 minute wait).

We stopped for coffee and a chai latte and then filled up with gas ($3.25). We then found Rt 89 and headed north. It’s less than 3 hours to the Canadian border so we are way ahead of schedule. Two years ago it took us two weeks to get to Canada on Rt 191 and this trip we are taking 5-6 days.

Good weather and little traffic which has been the pattern so far this trip (except Salt Lake City, yuck).

Mostly wide open country with lots of wheat fields, really big ones. The last part crossed the Blackfeet Reservation which is nice country but undeveloped (no crops to speak of).

At the last minute we decided to head north west and see if we could get into Glacier National Park. Going to the Sun road was backed up and we later learned they are doing a time of day entry so we then tried to get into Many Glacier Lodge (where we’d stayed many years ago) after turning onto Rt 3.  We got close to Many Glacier but only people with reservations could go on, so we turned around when we saw the shuttle bus and the road turned to dirt.

So skip Glacier, let's go to Waterton Lakes National Park on the Canadian side. Rt 17 is a little side road that enters Glacier NP but only on the corner where there are no attractions. We entered Canada at a tiny border crossing, Chief Mountain, and the border official asked simple questions. mostly about firearms.

Thirty eight years ago we hiked from Glacier to Waterton, a 5 nights hike, and ended at the Prince of Wales hotel. So we decided to see if we could revisit the hotel. To our pleasant surprise, they let us into the park for free, to “promote tourism”, which told us that demand was low, which  turned out to be true. We stopped at the hotel and Deb asked about availability. To her surprise there was one room available on the fifth floor. We called it her birthday present and it actually was not that expensive since a Canadian dollar is currently worth $0.73 USD.

Next we drove out to Cameron Lake and did a 4 km round trip hike down the lake. Then back to investigate the town which turned out to be bigger than we thought. Then back to the Prince of Wales for a late afternoon tea/coffee overlooking the lake from the hotel's great room. Dinner was really good, shepherds pie (with bison), salad and drinks. At 7:00 a young guy gave a half hour talk on the history of the hotel. Then off to the room. We can never guess how our day is going to go but today was great!