Fort Macleod

Today is the fifth day we have been here at Buffalo Plains RV park and we will be staying here until Tuesday next week through the long week-end. In our previous post we said we were going to drive to the town of Foremost to look at their RV park and perhaps stay there.  On Sunday we made the the trip through Lethbridge to Foremost back up to Taber. It was raining most of the drive and gave us a look at the prairies in south western Alberta under these conditions. It always has been hot and dry here in our previous trips through this area. It was wet and certainly not hot as the temperature never went above 8C all day.

We arrived in Foremost, checked out their municipal park and decided that we would continue to stay at Buffalo Plains Park. After a short drive through town we headed back to the TCH, Alberta route 3. On our way through Taber, we stopped and bought a dozen ears of the famous Taber corn. On our last trip through Taber we bought corn and it was without a doubt the best ever. By the time we got back to Buffalo Plains the rain had eased up and the clouds were starting to break up. The park cat came over to officially welcome us to the area for the next few days.

We packed a lunch and got under way early Monday morning. There is a lot to see in this area so we decided to head back to the mountains, go up to Crowsnest and visit the Frank Slide area. The first thing that we noticed was fresh snow on the mountains ahead of us. What we got in rain arrived as early snow on the higher mountains. It was really weird because when we drove down from Cochrane there was no snow to be seen on these same mountains. Just shows how quickly things can change in this part of the country. The Frank Slide occurred in 1903 when the side of Turtle Mountain collapsed and millions of tons of rock took out half of the town of Frank in less than two minutes. The interpretation center is a fantastic place with human interest stories, history of mining in the area and an excellent explanation on the formation of different kinds of mountains. You could almost become a amateur geologist with the information at this center. The interesting thing is that there will be another collapse of the south side of this mountain. It's not a matter of "if" but "when". Movements in the mountain are being monitored on an ongoing basis and a system has been set up to evacuate people well ahead of any collapse, they hope!  This photo shows the CPR rail line going through the existing slide residue. An interesting piece of folk lore is that for centuries the First nations people would never set up camp at the base of Turtle mountain which they called the trembling mountain.
We finished off the day by visiting Pincher Creek then heading back to our campsite.

Tuesday we headed out to the Remington Carriage Museum in Cardston, about a 45 minute drive to the south of Fort Macleod. It was another fine day, a bit cool but sunny. Cardston is another of these southern Alberta prairie towns. Neat, tidy, lots of flowers and, of course, wide streets. This museum has the largest collection of carriages, wagons and early cars in North America. We took a guided tour and then did the tour on our own so we cold take our time. Some of the carriages were magnificent. We ate lunch there and then took a tour of the restoration area within the museum. An elderly gentleman gave us the tour and explained the process of restoration. It is a fascinating story that is too long to be told here. A side note. This is our 25th anniversary year and N did not get a Yellowknife diamond when we were in the NWT. However, here in Cardston, she got her prairie diamond. It seem that when people were moving into the western provinces as settlers, young couples would meet, fall in love and get married on the way out, Wagon trains moved slow! Since jewellers were not among the early settlers,  diamond rings were created out of horse shoe nails. Our host in the restoration shop made N hers. So, now she wears a prairie diamond. We left Cardston and drove to a small town south of Lethbridge called Raymond. The reason we went to Raymond was to visit the Old Country Sausage shop. (www.oldcountrysausages.com). Owned and operated by Klaus Schurmann, this shop produces smoked meats, dry cured bacon and ham, back bacon and all kinds of sausages, using only herbs, spices and sea salt. He uses no binders, no fillers, no MSG, gluten free,no sugar, no grain products, no artificial colouring and no nitrates. Needless to say we bought as much as we could bearing in mind that our freezer space is limited. It is real good stuff!!
The next day, Wednesday, we just stayed at the campsite and took it easy. The wind was blowing, it always seems to blow out here, but it was a good day. The sun shone, we had showers, some cloud and more sun. Watching the weather out on the prairie is fascinating. You can see rain showers coming when they are miles away. The sky can be black in one quarter while the sun shines in the other quarter which makes the light patterns on the ground change constantly.

Thursday was a good and bad day. We spent the morning in Fort Macleod touring the old North West Mounted Police fort and museums. Fort Macleod is a good history lesson on how the Canadian west was developed in a far more peaceful manner than the American west. There is a exceptional first nations museum devoted to how their clothing was made, how they travelled and lived. The decorations on and quality of some of these exhibits was magnificent.  This was the good part of the day. The bad part started in the afternoon at the campground. It was time to empty our holding tanks and this campground did not have sewer outlets at each site. This meant that we had to hook up to the RV and move it to the central dump site. This type of move means that our slides have to come in, gear has to be stowed etc. We did all of this, hooked up and moved towards the dump site. All of a sudden we heard a SNAP and I remembered that I did not lower the TV antenna! The power line I hit with certainly lowered it for me. The antenna was broken off completely.  We dumped the tanks, got back to our site and I went up on the roof and disconnected the cable and brought the pieces down. I needed some new parts for sure. Friday morning I got on the phone and found a dealer in Lethbridge who said he had the pieces I needed. We drove to Lethbridge only to find out he did not have the same pieces I needed. On our way back we decided that we might be able to repair the antenna and get it back up. Not that we had to watch TV, but I wanted to make sure that I could keep the roof watertight, and the only way to do that was reinstall the antenna. With N's help we found a piece of wood and cut a piece out of it to slide inside the two broken pieces. Two or three screws, some gorilla tape and we were back in business. Went up on the roof, straightened some bent aluminum and attached the repaired antenna. Good as new, almost!!
This brings us up to date. I'll post a new album later today.

Quote for the day:

A complex system that works is invariably found to have evolved from a simple system that works.
  - John Gaule

Cheers

P & N