eptivity

The saga that continues. As it is now ancient history, I offer you the highlights:

1. Drying oneself off with Bounty paper towel after a brisk campground shower, having left all of one’s towels at home. This is because one is awesome.

2. Breakfast at Tim Hortons, or, as Cenaida insisted on calling it, “Tom Houghtons.” Doughnuts: meh. Coffee: I don’t drink it. Egg and cheese breakfast sandwich: best I’ve ever eaten, the offerings of present husband’s company excluded.

3. Driving through the parking lot of Calgary’s Olympic park, as have so many great athletes before us.

4. And on to Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump. We planned very little before the trip, just a vague schedule of where we needed to be at the end of each day. But Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump was scheduled from as soon as I found out that it was nearby where we were going. Cenaida would only go if I promised that she wouldn’t learn anything. But then she did.

So there we were, minding our own business, when:

I was very impressed with their interpretive center. It’s built into a hillside so it’s footprint is negligible and there are two different trails that really let you appreciate the perspective of the faller or feller, as the case may be, in the buffalo jump experience. I overheard a small child tell her mother that she would be “the one in the back.”

5. Cenaida was saddened that all of the buffalo we saw or heard about were dead, and so was heartened to drive through the buffalo paddock featuring real live buffalo that we could barely see in one of the parks along our route.

6. Soon after, we crossed into Montana and over a cattle guard (“Texas gate” in Canada) and past some range cattle. Here is a tiny fraction of the herd, being whizzed by at 7 miles per hour:

7. Then we crossed over the cattle guard at the other end of the range territory, only to discover that it was a fake. I didn’t even know they did this: the cow guy put up the posts and then painted some stripes on the road. Very sneaky. We fell for it. And we are arguably much smarter than cows.

Third Day Observation

The rivers on the east side of the Continental Divide flow the wrong way.

I don’t spend much time east of the Rockies, so whenever I drive east, the rivers are always flowing in the opposite direction. It was quite disorienting for them to flow in the wrong direction.

Indebted to the Queen

We owe the Queen:

$2 = Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump trail guide we got for free because the girl at the window had already closed her till.

$6.90 x 2 = Stopping in Banff National Park without buying a National Park Pass because we didn’t know if we were actually going to stop, didn’t know where to buy them, and the nice guy at the campground told us that it was okay; we weren’t going to be out on the trails needing rescue that night.

$17 = Staying overnight in a provincial park without paying. It was allegedly self-service, in which one picks out a campsite and then waits patiently for the camping attendant to collect our money. We never saw this alleged camping attendant and, ergo, had no one on whom to bestow our $17.

$32.80 = The check’s in the mail.

Seriously. At least to the park service.