2,000 km and still in Alberta!

 

We have some catching up to do!

Day 8 - 

We washed the dust off the car from our Plains adventures yesterday - in a real live car wash!  Mint Car Wash in Lethbridge had a real live person come to our window, take our money and send us in, where a young person was standing holding a paddle reading ‘Stop’ and he ushered us onto the rails and got us rolling.  Wow, I almost went back through the car wash just to get pictures.  Reminded me of the car wash at 41st and Granville when I was a kid - we would get out of the car and stand behind a window and watch the car go through the cycle.  Guess they didn’t trust us not to open the windows 😂

It’s Mother’s Day, 1st in 44 years I haven’t been with my children.  

We headed south from Lethbridge for a day trip to Aisinai’pi / Writing-On-Stone, another UNESCO protected site.  We stepped out of our car and were immediately greeted by Laura and Dustin asking if we were there for the tour.  Tour?  Yes - of course we were!

We had a 2 hour tour through some of the most beautiful and peaceful places on Earth with 3 guides; Laura (Naturalist) led the group, very knowledgeable and a great story teller; Blair was our Blackfoot Interpreter who, with his knowledge of his heritage, brought us closer to the customs and traditions of the Plains people; and Dustin (Archaeologist ) provided with what all the information that archaeologists do.  It was interesting having each of their perspectives because the petroglyphs (carved) and pictographs (painted) are over a huge period of time and the style reflects that.  More recent ‘carvings’ are only considered graffiti after 1957, otherwise they are part of the story - it will never cease to amaze what moves people to add their name and date to something as sacred as this space.  

The Milk River runs through the area surrounded by hoodoos, coulees and grasslands.  The entire area holds great cultural and spiritual significance for the Blackfoot people who regularly camped in the Milk River Valley as long at 3,500 years ago.  We were surrounded by knowledge, history, and most importantly to us - spirituality.  The stories in the pictographs were interesting to me because they didn’t record things like hunting (buffalo-jump) or gathering, they seemed more about power, battles and horse raids with pictures of shields and animals.  And some represent visions of Spirit Beings and spirituality.  

Laura told us the story of Napi, the trickster, who gave his buffalo hide to Rock when he was too warm, and then took it back.  It is a wonderful story, told eloquently by Laura, but too long to repeat here, but a few highlights involved how the beaver came to have a flat tail, how the bat came to have a pushed in face, and how the ‘erratic’ in Okotokos came to be there.  Archaeologists will tell you it was carried there by a glacier, but the Blackfoot tell a very different story involving Napi, the trickster.  You will have your own interpretation of the story when you get there.

The Northwest Mounted Police outpost certainly put a different perspective on things.  The NWMP force was formed in 1873 to give the NWT a government presence, to ensure a lawful region for European settlers and to stop the liquor trade which was devasting the First Nations People.  The thought was that the trafficking of liquor would be easily enabled in the area of Aisinai’pi because of the coulees, easy and sheltered passage from the US; but instead the NWMP spent most of their time on tedious tasks of fighting prairies fires, herding American-owned cattle back across the border, and riding long patrols along the boundary.  Many of the bored Mounties deserted, some busied themselves with carving their names into the sandstone rocks and using the cliffs as target practice.  

We shared an intimate few minutes with two mating Bull Snakes outside the interpretation centre - they are constrictors, the only constrictors in Canada.  These guys are huge, one of the largest/longest snakes of North America, reaching lengths of up to 8 ft., they’re yellow and spotted.  

I certainly could use another few days with Laura the Naturalist, that’s for sure - so many

Day 9 - 

Taber:   We left Lethbridge with a pretty full charge and headed east toward Medicine Hat - but not without a stop at Taber, Alberta!  We wanted to top up our charge and drop into the Taber Irrigation Impact Museum, we were curious how these miles and miles of farmland for as far as you can see got their water, and Brenda at the museum had all the answers!  

It all began with Tank 77, (located 77 miles along the CPR track from Dunmore to Taber).  The tank fed the steam engines that carried coal mined at Coal Banks (Lethbridge) to Medicine Hat..  

It became apparent that the millions of acres of grassland could be used to grow crops and Alberta Rail and Coal Co. were to sell the land for a good price it would need to be irrigated.

A call was put out to the L.D.S. Church headquarters in Utah offering the 30,000 acres of land at a cost of $1.00 per acre if they would come to Alberta and build an irrigation system.  Pioneering families flocked to Alberta, and that’s how Taber got its name - the Mormon settlers suggested the place be called “Tabernacle”, and Taber it was!  As series of irrigation canals were built and farmers book their day(s) to water and the taps come on, rain or shine.  There is a great relief map of the whole system in the Taber Irrigation Impact Museum.

Brenda tells us that Taber is the Corn Capital of Canada - a claim to fame they will have to duke out with Chilliwack!  

The pioneers did well: 

* Taber is: 

- the largest producer of Beet Sugar refined by Rogers Sugar, still the largest employer in the area

- provides the potatoes for McCain, Frito-Lay etc, McCain still has their plant there

- home of Lucerne (which I thought was dairy?  Another Question!)

- Spitz sunflower seeds 

- Westons

- EV charging station at the Museum!

Brenda directed us to visit the Coulees in her favourite park along the Oldman River, where we picnicked in a huge stand of cottonwood.  

Medicine Hat:  Back in the car and on to Medicine Hat, which we loved so much we stayed for three full days!  

Not much open today because it is Monday, and like a lot of towns where the shops are owner operated, they enjoy 2 days off in a row, but lots of good window shopping and the commitment to spend the day in town tomorrow.  There are lots of wonderful murals and a really cool park beside the courthouse that has a giant chess set noted in the Guinness World Records in 2009 as the largest chess set board.  It was sponsored by various community groups, including Rotary of course!  And a wonderful Rotary ping pong table as well.  And no graffiti!  Across the street is the Esplanade Centre with a statue honouring the Germans from Russia and all the Pioneer Settlers in Western Canada.

The day was hot, and the shade welcome with a breeze coming up off the South Saskatchewan River. 

We booked into the Medicine Hat Villa, a wonderful boutique hotel right in the heart of the city, we can plug into the trickle charge and spend the day walking everywhere.

Day 10 - 

As promised, we’re staying downtown Medicine Hat today and exploring, especially River Bee Books, the new independent bookstore in town. Bridget and her husband have put together and lovely space in Railway Ave. and she sold out over 1/2 her stock in the first week! Guess Medicine Hat was ready for a bookstore!  Bridget’s yoga teacher was kind enough to give me a lesson on “tagging”, Instagram and a few other unfamiliar things which I hope I will remember!  I would love to get all of these independent bookstores linked …. 

We explored a fully loaded, elegant kitchen store called Sunday Dinner, had coffee and a scone at  The Station where the owner ?Jake gave us all sorts of information on what to do in Medicine Hat, and a lesson in Disc Golf!  While we were having dinner at the “Local” we watched a large team of mostly male youth all wearing blue t-shirts with a yellow logo picking up litter - it is a skateboarding club and they do a downtown cleanup once a year.  Very Cool.  And who knew skateboarders had clubs!

We visited the century old Medalta Potteries (Med being Medicine Hat, Alta being Alberta), in the Historic Clay District where pieces were produced that everyone of us would recognize, Centennial pieces, cowboy hat ashtrays, familiar dinner ware and of course the Medalta bowl, I have the one my mother used to make bread every week (and my cat Sweetie Pie later slept in when it lived on top of my fridge!).  There are 3 huge brick urns on the site, which now serves as a museum, and also site of a contemporary ceramic arts residency program.

We wrapped up the day with a real treat - pedicures by Hailey and Morgan.  This was Roger’s 1st and definitely the best! 

The smoke is beginning to roll in from the forest fires and our family in Hay River are packed and ready to go on a minute’s notice, and in the meantime they’re watering down their house. 

I was thinking this blog would take us out of Alberta but there are still things we want to see and do before heading to Saskatchewan so we’ve decided to stay an extra day.