Unintended consequences

 Change one thing and you never know what might happen. I could not get happy with a camp ground in Calgary so booked one in Crowsnest Pass. Just days before our reservations I decided to change to another location. So glad I did.

 Cheap prices, eh? Looks can be deceiving some times. While that looks good, it is for a litre not a gallon. To put it into prices you can relate to multiply by 4. Has your heart stopped? You breathing? Now remember my 100 gallon fuel tank. The only saving grace is the current exchange rate. 175 dollars on pump actually hit my card at around $135 US.

 Meanwhile back to those consequences I mentioned. Under our original plans we would have driven thru this area at 100kph. Revised plan has us staying at city owned park in Claresholm Alberta.

 We have left the mountains and the trees for a bit and are in the plains. Grow a lot of wheat up here, also big ranches. Nice park with full hook ups at a great price, $33 Canadian/$25 US. They also have a nice little museum with information on the history of the area.

mural at campground

 We then discovered a neat museum to visit in Fort MacLeod. More information can be found HERE. Very informative with a ton of information. The mounted musical review was started back in 1876 or so. Riders/mounties were all young people who did a great job

 That brings us to our next surprise. In the visitor center I saw a flyer for it and knew we must go. Website can be found HERE. Very nicely done exhibits covering ancient times till now. We also have learned of the First Nation, basically native Indian tribes who are very involved.

  They have both indoor exhibits and trails to the actual sites. We were going to walk the upper trail but they closed it right before we went to walk it. Seems local beer thought feeding on the berries was more important than our viewing historic sites. Not wanting to become bear scat we let him have his way.

 On our drive out to the location we saw a heard of bison in a nearby field. Did not stop and felt like perhaps we had let an opportunity go by. I had made note of where we last saw them. Upon leaving we left the pavement and drove down a gravel road aways till I found them. They tolerated me as I could not get too close due to fence. Magnificent creatures. We have been more keenly aware of the atrocities committed by the white man against the buffalo since we visited a museum outside Abilene Texas. Link to web page HERE. Instead of being celebrated Buffalo Bill and hundreds of others should have been in jail. Do your research on this issue

 We would in all likely hood have missed all of this had I not changed our planned stops. Unintended consequences indeed.

 Next stop back in the USA to see Glacier National Park. Plus our three month update, oh joy!


on the high prairies...