We're Dancing our way into Canada!

We ate a hardy breakfast this morning, trying to consume more of the food that we have read might be confiscated at the Canadian border crossing. We have read that you can't take eggs, or milk, or potatoes, or raw meat, or anything out of its original wrapper, or any fresh fruits and vegetables. So we have forced ourselves to cook and eat at home to use up as much of our food as possible. That darn residential refrigerator can certainly hold a lot of food! Then we were on the road for the last forty miles of this Big Sky state. We are driving right beside the Amtrak rails, so it is fun to watch the passenger train whiz by the canola fields with us.

The only town we drive through today is Cut Bank, Montana. According to the resident penguin, this is the coldest place in the nation. Actually, the fine print should read that this is the coldest place in the lower 49 states.

We are crossing the border at Del Bonita, one of the smaller of the border crossing stations. In fact, the narrow road would discourage less hardy travelers from taking a motor home this route.

The border station looks more like a house than an official government agency that was going to rip away the last of our apples and cherries that Denisa couldn't consume.

The professional agent asked where we were from, where we were going, why we were going, if we had fire arms, alcohol, pepper spray, or cannabis, how long we were staying, how many were traveling in our vehicle, and if we had a boat. Never once did food come up in the questions!

Then he asked us to pull over to the side, and we worried that they were going to search our refrigerator. But no, they could care less about our fresh fruits and vegetables and milk! Instead, we had to pull over to get our kayak inspected. After all Denisa's fretting about this border crossing, she gets to keep her apples and cherries! The other good news is that now we have an inspection certificate, so we can put our kayak into the mountain lakes of Banff and Jasper National Parks. They even gave us a free chamois to dry our boat as a "Welcome to Canada" gift.

Denisa took pictures of the signs as Mark drove out of the inspection station. Welcome to Alberta--our first Canadian province!

The next sign alerted us that all speed limits would be in metric. So no, we won't be driving 100 miles per hour. That is 100 kilometers per hour, or 62 miles per hour.

We had another hour-long drive to our first destination north of the border on this beautiful weather day. The fields of bright yellow canola was especially nice with the Rockies in the background!

The last few miles were on a gravel road, as our destination is the Great Canadian Barn Dance RV Park. You better believe that we're going to stop at any RV Park that has the word "dance" in it!

After parking in the camp site on the end, we could hardly wait to take a picture of the Rocky Mountains in the distance. We love this view from our motor home window!

During a walk around the park we discovered the pond, with its families of geese. Do we still call them Canadian geese now that we're in Canada?

But the star of the park is the big red barn, where all the fun happens. On Friday night they have a live musical show, but we are here for the Saturday night barn dance. It starts with an all-you-can-eat cowboy buffet. We skipped lunch today, so we really enjoyed the food. Then we headed upstairs to the barn loft for the dancing.

It started with an hour-long lesson that included learning the line dance called "The Electric Slide." That's pretty basic for line dancers like us. Then we had some two-step lessons, also pretty basic for us. Finally, the live music began at 8:00, and didn't stop until 11:00.

Our feet were really tired, but it was a great evening of fun. When we needed to cool off, we could take a break on the barn's deck where temperatures were in the 50s and it didn't get dark until 11:00.

The owners have been doing this for over 30 years, and they insist on blessing the food before we ate. They also don't allow alcohol or cursing in the barn, so we were guaranteed a wholesome evening that families can enjoy. Good job Great Canadian Barn Dance! We've had a great welcome as we danced our way into Canada!