We’re parked at Bert & Janie’s house in Bigfork, MT, near the beautiful Flathead Lake.   We’re here to catch up on a few things before we head across the border to Canada.

Mostly we have an enormous pile of mail to dig through.   Emma’s school curriculum arrived in two large boxes which will probably put us 30 pounds closer to exceeding the Airstream’s Gross Vehicle Weight Rating.   I also got a large Priority Mail box full of letters from Airstream Life magazine subscribers (mostly renewals and subscriptions) which I’ll need to process before we head out.   With all the various things in the mail we expect to need all of Wednesday and Thursday just to catch up.

One of the articles to be published in the upcoming (November) Winter 2007 issue of Airstream Life will be about crossing the Canadian border.   I re-read it this morning and remembered that I had neglected to call our insurance company for a new “Canadian Interprovince Liability Insurance Card.”   That’s a little slip of paper that reassures the Canadian officials that we have insurance in the event of an accident.   Fortunately, my insurance company was able to email the card to me in PDF format so I had it in two minutes via email.

The weather is forecast to be warm and sunny through the weekend in Banff, so at this point our little northern excursion is looking good.   Our only real concern is another early snowstorm like we had in Yellowstone last week.

At this point, snow seems confined to the upper reaches of the Rockies. The drive up from Butte to here was beautiful, and Flathead Lake was glassy calm in the late afternoon.   Montana, Eleanor has pointed out, looks like an amalgam of many other states we like: snow-capped mountains, pines and aspens, little cacti, broad lakes, dry valleys, hot springs.   Driving through it can be as pleasant as a day’s hike.