Cross Canada Trip: Day 82 - Thursday, August 21

There was a rainstorm last night and to was still raining this morning when we bid farewell to Maple Creek and the Province of Saskatchewan. It was raining so hard the windshield wipers on the Moho had a hard time keeping the windows clear. It was also a chilly 15 degrees when we woke up. Not too far down the road we enter Alberta and the rain lets up a bit. Omg the gas here is $1.089 - well we are filling up! What a steal that is. We went through Medicine Hat and got on the # 3 to Lethbridge. Lots of farms around here and feels kind of homey. It must be quite dry around here as they use both wheel lines and pivots for irrigation. Fields and fields of fresh cut hay down waiting to be bailed, with the rain they will have to wait a few days. The area we are driving through is called Cypress Hills, The Badlands.

Looking for a timmies for coffee. No such luck here!

We are just going through Burdett and there is a sign touting that this is the home of the very first irrigation pivot in all of Canada!

Just outside Taber I noticed a large field with a herd of Buffalo, but no sign to let us know any details. Taber is bigger than we thought. They have a timmies, yeah so we stopped and filled up on a ration of caffeine. We also picked up some fresh Taber corn for tonight's supper. Mmm, good. Fields of corn on one side of the road and turf on the other. Quite the town Taber is. Just outside of Taber is a McCain's chip factory where Don Stewart used to work years ago.

It's still raining cars and dogs and as we go through the towns we note that the campgrounds and all around are very wet and muddy. They must have had rain for a few days. At Ft. McLeod we turn off to go to the Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump. We hope we can get out and explore without too much rain. It is still very cold and windy! Oh my goodness we see mountains! Feels like home.

The Interpretative Centre had very good displays and short films on the history of the tribes and the jump.

These are a few of the symbols used by the tribe to tell their story of the hunts.

The centre is built right around the jump site and you have to go up 6 floors and outside the building along a trail to the site where the buffalo fell over the cliff.

This is what it looks like today, after many years of erosion. They feel it was twice the height 3000 to 5000 years ago when the jump was very active. Archealogical findings have told the story of how the tribes survived and for how many years that particular jump site was used. It is amazing that there were millions of buffalo roaming the prairies that sustained a civilization for hundreds and thousands of years - and then the Europeans came along and a way of life changed forever!

This is the lower part of the prairie where the tribe had their camp - at the base of the mountain. This made for easy access to the kill for cleaning and processing. They would have enough meat and supplies from one good jump for the entire winter. There was nothing wasted from the buffalo - every part was used for something to sustain the tribe.

This was an awesome tribute to the Buffalo and the Blackfoot Tribe's survival. Well done.

So we have decided that it is too cold, windy and rainy to stay here - so we are headIng for BC via the Crowsnest Pass! BC here we come. The last of the Alberta trek on Hwy 3.