Oh, Can - a da!

Canada, eh!  Made it to beautiful Alberta.

 

Waterton Lakes National Park is the Canadian counterpart of Glacier National Park. It is adjacent to it north of the border, and together since 1932, the parks are presented as the first International Peace Park.  What a difference!  The mountains are still absolutely magnificent!

 

The actual town of Waterton is located within the park, adjacent to the campground.  Only a couple of blocks to the shops, lake, and waterfalls.   Here is Cameron Falls.

 

Oh, and one amazing hotel, build by CN Rail to entice tourists into the area was built in 1923.  I would be enticed…

Boating buddies Conny, Alvin, and grandson Isaiah arrived on Thursday.  Great to catch up!  On Thursday, they took us to visit friends in a nearby  Hutterite Colony.  A religious group, the Hutterites have hundreds of colonies in Canada, mostly farming communes in the western plains.  Basically a commune arrangement, they are completely self sufficient, with over 16,000 acres in this one colony of 128 people.   Besides fulfilling their own needs, the colony sells eggs, chickens, beef, and pork to the area.  Anything they cannot manufacture or grown is usually supplied by other colonies. Citing religious beliefs, they do not allow pictures (even on their driver’s licenses if possible) so we could not take any of the commune.  It is an amazing place, though, efficiently run and extraordinarily clean.  And no, they do not practice polygamy!  for more info click on Hutterite

 After our visit, Luke and I took a side trip to the Head Smashed In Buffalo Jump World Heritage Site.  This is one of many sites used by Indians hundreds of years ago until relatively recently to herd buffalo off of a cliff to sure death.  After the chaos was over, all parts of all of the buffalo were processed, providing food, clothing, sewing implements, etc, for the coming year, especially the bitter winter (winter here runs about -40F, with higher wind chills from the constant winds, up to 60 MPH in the winter!).

The view from the cliff is wonderful, looking over the plains.

 On Friday we drove along the Red Rock Parkway, into the Red Rock Canyon.  It was cloudy and a bit rainy, but that was ok.  It gave us a different perspective.  Here is the actual canyon.

Beautiful Blakiston Falls awaited us at the end of the 8 mile road. The falls carved out the canyon over thousands of years.  The falls erodes the rock at the rate of the thickness of a nickel per year. 

 

Not only did we see the falls, but we got to see a mama black bear with her two cubs.

 

A huge brown bear, certainly a grizzly!  The rangers confirmed our pictures ---  large like a grizzly, bit of a hump back like a grizzly, digging up roots like a grizzly, brown like a grizzly….but the big ears gave him away ….Grizzlies have very small, rounded mouse type ears – this was a very large, cinnamon colored black bear…oh well.  He was huge and beautiful to watch (from a safe distance!)

 

Also, a moose, grazing lazily by a little pool.

A resident doe lives in the campground and apparently prefers the clover in our site to all others.  She is here all of the time, nibbling away.  We don’t frighten her, but we are certainly leery of her.  Deer attack warnings are posted all over the place (heck, forget the bears, watch out for deer!)

 

 A few years ago there were so many deer in the campground that they became over confident and aggressive, attacking pets and sometimes people.  The city brought in dogs to live in the campsite, under the watch of a resident camper, to deter the deer.   Apparently it works, as this is the only one we’ve seen here.

 

Flowers ----It’s spring in the Rockies and I promised flowers.  Here are a few, only  a very few,  of the many we’ve seen.  There are so many that we haven’t taken pictures of.

 

 

 

And my favorite flower – the Wild Orange Jacketed Luke field flower…

Still no internet for ourselves.  We haven’t been to a city large enough to get a Canadian SIM card to use for data on Luke’s phone, so I’m using the occasional wifi spots we find.  I think we’ll have internet on Saturday at our in campsite IN CALARY WHEN WE SEE STAMPEDE!  Heather comes in tomorrow afternoon and we start our Stampede experience on Sunday!  Yipee!!