The Great Wilderness of Walmart

Did you know walmart allows camping in their parking lots? They do- and so we did!  We were in a long way from anywhere good, and it was getting dark, so we decided to call the Walmart in Helana, MT home for a night. Evidently camping at Walmart is a pretty common practice, as there was a whole little community of RVs, out of work folks, and people living on the cheap all camped out at the back of the parking lot. I'm not normal a big fan of walmart, but honestly, I have to admit it was a pretty handy place to stay because it was: free(!)- safe- and if you needed anything- anything at all- there's a walmart right outside! It was also the first time on the trip we found people driving campers as old as ours! There were a set of minor repairs I needed to make to Bessie, so we decided to take the morning and work on a couple of them. One of our parking lot neighbors, who was staying with his wife in a beat up older coach of his own, saw me working and came over to offer a hand. He turned out to be a damn fine fellow, and we chatted awhile. We got to talking about crossing the Canadian border, and I asked if they had ever gaven him any trouble because of the way his rig looked. He replied, "The never gave me a second look, but then I didn't have polka dots all over the side of mine!" From his lips to the ears of Jebus. I don't know if it was the polka dots or what, but when we tried to cross the border, our delightfully mean and cranky inspection agent told us to "pull over there and report to immigration". Damn. That's never a good sign! After an hour or so of waiting to see the immigration agent, it turns out he didn't like our answer that it might take us two week to cross over to Alaska. The more common answer is 4 or 5 days, which means you'd have to drive 70 miles and hour- he clearly didn't look very closely at our rig! ha! We had another nice camp site last night, by another river! We are now in Vulcan, Alberta! No idea which came first, but they have a big model of the Enterprise in the middle of town!

Rest stop T-rex at Sweetwater

Bayard and the polka-dot wonder down by the river.

Lakes and streams every where- it's kinda freaking me out!

Poutine- a Canadian delicacy! Fries, cheese and gravy- yummy!
(the gravy is meat based, but you gotta try Roman food when in Rome!)

Beam me up Scott! According to the plaque, this thing was
bought by the local chamber to increase tourism. I have a
feeling they lost their shirt on the deal!

Look- Dr.Spock grew a beard- and looks just like Bayard!