Do You Have Black Beer In Waterton?

I made my second trip of the season to Waterton today. The weather wasn’t as nice as it was yesterday but it looked like it might still be a fairly good day out there. I was excited to use my new Waterton pass at the automatic gate and bypass all the lame tourists buying their silly little plain paper day or week passes that they’d have to plaster to their windshields with scotch tape. As it turned out, some “local” with a barcode pass was having trouble opening the gate and there was not even one car in line at either of the two staffed booths so I ended up going through the touristy way. Hopefully next time I’ll get to open the gate all by myself.

Speaking of passes, I got my single adult pass a few weeks ago while it was still at the early bird price of about $31. I’m sure I’ll visit Waterton at least two more times before the end of next May so it will have been well worth buying. There’s just one thing, I’m not crazy about the color, it’s bright yellow.

Until now when people would see me driving, say back towards town from Cameron lake or Red Rock they may have assumed I came solo but there was also at least a small chance that they may have generously supposed that my wife had been eaten by a bear or fallen out of the canoe because she was texting while paddling or even killed by a vampire whose last name wasn’t Cullen. Now with my bright fluorescent yellow pass they will immediately know that I came alone. Even when my car is parked in town families will gasp in horror from hundreds of feet away when they spot my single loser person pass. Whatever.

I drove (with my pass in the glove box) up to Cameron Lake which was about 90% melted. There was a bus load of tourists (hey, I said buS load) there when I arrived. While I was washing mosquito entrails off my hand in the lake a woman, who I would soon find out was from El Salvador, was so surprised that I was touching the water as there was still ice in the lake. She asked if it was cold and I said yes, yes it is, ice cold in fact, but you know, I’m so very brave… Then she completely changed the subject and asked if we had beer here. All the buildings were still boarded up and nothing was open so I thought her question a bit odd but I told her that there was a liquor store in the town. She didn’t seem satisfied and started to ask about black beer. I was getting more confused until I finally realized that she was asking about bears, which would have made a whole lot more sense right from the start. I assured her that we do have several colors of bears here and even the grizzly variety. “Even here, at this lake?” she asked. When I raised my eyebrows, opened my eyes a bit wider and gave her one nice big vertical nod she started meandering slowly but obviously back toward her bus.

I climbed up path on the right side of Cameron Falls, went down to the end of the road and skipped four rocks into the lake and bought a Snickers at Pat’s. I did see a few Mule deer and a couple of White Tails…meh. I was way more excited to find a couple of baby Ground Squirrels (Columbian) playing in the grass. They were quite cute.

I did take several pictures along the way but after deciding they were all lame I deleted them all before I started writing this post. Maybe I should have kept at least one of the baby squirrels. Oh well.
 
BTW, maybe you noticed or not but, I changed eight things on the park pass to make it less "copy friendly". Can you tell what is different?