Our entrance back in the the US from Canada went much smoother than entering Canada. No COVID testing or proof of our vaccinations needed for better or for worse. On our drive from Waterton Lakes National Park in Canada to Glacier National Park in Montana we passed through Cardston (Alberta Canada) where a big billboard was advertising a carriage museum (the world’s largest collection!). Seeing that it wasn’t a particularly long driving day we took the bait and stopped.
Remington Carriage Museum
The Carriage Museum is exactly what it sounds like; a giant building that housed over 330 vehicles, most of which were once drawn by horses. They also had horse stables on the grounds where you could go look at the horses or take carriage rides.
The museum had a huge restoration workshop you could tour as well as a large room showing every sort of carriage I had ever seen plus more. The restoration center was incredible. It is such an art to restore something rather than modernizing it. They also had the most amazing sewing machines on display. All of the leather work not only in the upholstery but in the tops of the carriages and the rest of the luggage compartments were sewn on the heavy duty machines run by every day ladies and men of the time. The hand painting details on some were so intricate. Incredible work!
Since it was only us and one older couple we had a personal tour of the place and got to look into a lot of the carriages that we wouldn’t have been able to otherwise. We got to see the 1902 barouche (a 4 wheeled hooded carriage) that Queen Elizabeth rode in semi-recently during her Platinum Jubilee. I liked the barouche style the best as they were simple yet elegant with almost a baby cradle sort of a look.
The museum also had a slew of kids activities in it such as carriage ride races. It was really cute! They each sat on mini carriages and in front of them they were looking at a screen that made it look like they were traveling down a dirt road behind a team of horses. The whole while the carriages shook as if they were going over bumps.
Another fun kids activity was to sit in a carriage (a very comfortable carriage I might add) and learn how to hold the reins to a horse team as well as how to steer them. The girls had a lot of fun with it.
In the stables we visited two beautiful horse brothers, a team who were getting a bath for their big day on July 1st for Canada Day, the anniversary of confederation. The gentleman who did the informational video inside the museum (about how to to steer the horses) was in the barn. We chatted with him for quite sometime and he was very sweet and a very experienced horse trainer and driver. All the Canadian’s we met along the trip were so nice.
Border Crossing
Justin stopped by the duty free shop on the Canadian side of the border before we headed over to the US. After he paid for it, a van from the shop drove it over to another parking lot, still on the Canadian side, and handed it to him over there. I guess that was close enough to the US border that it would be more obvious for someone to lie, turn back around and stay in Canada? It was pretty funny though and somehow felt very sketchy.
Heart of Glacier RV Park
We had reservations for Heart of Glacier RV Park for 2 nights following so we could have a home base while exploring the East entrances of Glacier National Park. It’s always nice to have an RV Park stop here and there throughout our roadtrips so we have a place with hookups and laundry. It’s so much nicer to do laundry at our leisure at a campground while the girls play rather than be stuck at a laundromat for hours on end. I also like to take regular showers here and there as well as give the girls one. There are only so many days in a row I can go with only washing my hair in the sink and taking washcloth baths. The RV park wasn’t anything special but it was a fine place to stay and the washer and drier were amazing! They did a much better job than mine at home. They had two sets of front loaders; one large and one small. We were also in walking distance to the entrance of the park as well as a very small plaza of shops.
