Day 7 - Choteau, MT to Mossleigh, AB

In a matter of 24 hours, we went from the warmest day on the trip to the coldest. When we started out, the temperature was just barely at 5C, but at least there was no liquid sunshine to have to deal with.

After a continental breakfast at the Stage Stop Inn, we headed north on US89 towards Browning. After fueling up there, we continued on Hwy 89 towards St Mary and Babb. We had heard from fellow bikers that there was some construction north of Browning, and sure enough, there was. They are not only repaving parts of the highway, but are actually constructing a brand new road parts of the way. As it turned out, there really weren’t any gravel portions to deal with, just delays as we waited for the pilot cars to get us through the 11 miles of construction activity. Regardless, Hwy89 is a nice road to travel through Montana farm country, with lots of elevation changes – we topped out at around 5,000 ft – and lots of dips and such.

Just past Babb, we cut across on SR17 to the border crossing at Waterton Glacier International Peace Park. The crossing was a breeze and the road made for very nice scenery. Once we crossed we picked up AB6 into Pincher Creek and our first Tim Horton’s coffee since our departure on the 14th. I had originally planned a visit to Head Smashed Inn Buffalo Jump, but since it was still quite cool out and since there was a threat of rain in the air, we decided to skip it and go right on through to Lethbridge and the local Harley dealer there, Crowsnest Trail HD. Our niece Brooke and her boyfriend walked over to meet us at the dealership and it was nice to see – it had been 7 years since we had seen her.

From Lethbridge, we scooted up Hwy 23 straight north to Mossleigh, and our destination for the night, the Caboose Cabins at Alpine

Crossing. It is a really neat place which also gave us the chance to meet up with more family – our nephew Shane, our niece-to-be Julia, and to boot, we all got together at our sister-in-law’s restaurant, The Mossleigh Bar & Grill.

In the end, it was a nice way to spend our 38th wedding anniversary and we wound up logging about 528 kms on the day, bringing the total for the trip to just over 4,160 kms.