David and Enid's Travels

Bar U Ranch

We stopped at Pincher Creek to get gas, groceries, and some screws and washers to fix another of the broken braces on the trailer skirting.  I also bought a small fan for use in the trailer, as we won’t have electricity for the next five days, and so will have to run it from the inverter.  We really appreciated having a fan like that in Australia, and since it is so warm out right now we think it will be good here as well.

We saw a doe and fawn by the side of the road just before we got to Pincher Creek.  The doe was on one side of the road, the fawn the other, but the doe walked back across the highway.  We were nearly stopped and so could see the two of them out the Tahoe window.

We then drove north on highway 22 towards Longview.  I’d noticed a sign about the Bar U Ranch National Historic Site quite a bit earlier, and so when I saw another sign indicating it was a kilometre ahead, decided to stop, especially as it was time for lunch anyway.  We went into the small museum, which you can tour for free, and decided to eat before we paid for entrance to the grounds.

It was a really nice way to spend a few hours, touring the old ranch site.  Many of the buildings have been restored with displays of ranch life.  At the cookhouse, one of the on-site interpreters was baking rhubarb crisp in the wood oven.  It was pretty hot in the kitchen, given that it was nearly 30 degrees C outside, and she had a good hot fire going.  We also saw the display of the round-up camp, where they have a chuckwagon and some wall tents set up.  The interpreter here had a fire going with kettles of boiling water and coffee hanging from hooks supported by branding irons.  We had a cup of tea, and she explained how the round-ups worked, with cowboys from several ranches working together to identify and brand cattle in the spring, and send them to market in the fall.  Later we came back and had some freshly baked bannock.

We got a short ride on a wagon drawn by two Percheron horses, and then got off to watch a ferrier as she shoed one of the massive feet on another of the Percherons.  The driver unhitched the horses from the wagon while we were watching, and led them to the river for a drink.  Some young children had been watching in awe as the horse shoe was nailed on, and then followed down to watch the horses get a drink.

We walked back and visited some of the other display buildings, then got back on the wagon.  We got a nice long ride as the driver took us through a field and a very lovely view out over the ranch site, rather than the short direct route back to the information centre.

It is unfortunate that the Canadian government has cut funding for Parks Canada, which includes these important heritage sites like the Bar U Ranch.  They are such an important part of maintaining our culture and history.  The cost of running them is small compared to the wealth of benefit to Canada in helping to understand our heritage as a nation, and why we are the people and country that we are today.

After a very nice afternoon at the ranch, where the weather was spectacular, we headed to Peter Lougheed Park to camp.  The drive across on highways 540 and 40 is beautiful.  It passes over the Highwood Pass, which at 2280 m is the highest highway point in Canada.  We are in the Boulton Creek campground.  Our site is very long and narrow, so it was a careful backing in with the trailer.  There is just room to get around the sides of the trailer before the gravel pad drops off about three feet sharply on each side.  After supper tonight I fixed a leak in my bike tire, and then we went for a ride around the campgrounds.

Summit Lake

Yesterday we met a woman on the trail who suggested we go to Summit Lake.  She said there were many glacier lilies there.  Today we took her advice, and hiked up to the lake.  It was very beautiful.

It was slightly cloudy this morning when we started, but the clouds soon blew away, and by mid-morning it was bright and sunny.  As we neared the top of the switchbacks on the trail up from Cameron Lake, we were caught up to by two female park employees.  We talked to them a bit about the flowers we were seeing, and discussed our plans and theirs for the day.  They were going over the Carthew Pass, and one of them was also setting up a geo-cache site at Summit Lake.

Glacier Lily

The last part of the trail was wet, as there is still the last remnant of snow in the trees.  We saw many yellow glacier lilies, as well as a lot of white spring beauty flowers, and both Enid and I took many pictures.  The lake was not much farther down the trail from the best flowers, and very pretty.  The far south shore in the shade was still snow-covered, and there are high mountains in the background in Glacier National Park.  Since it was still quite early, we continued on climbing about half way to Carthew Pass, where we stopped at a spot where we could look out over the boundary valley to the south towards the United States.

As we left the Cameron Lake parking lot we came upon some parked cars and motorcycles just a short way down the road.  There was a female brown colored bear and her black cub.  She was walking slowly across the road, and at first the cub was hiding in the grass, but shortly hustled across the road and disappeared into the trees.

The park interpreters we met this morning had suggested we drive the road to Red Rock Canyon to see the flowers there, so we did. The north edge of the park is where you can clearly see the sharp transition from prairie to mountain, and there are very pretty scenes where the prairie flowers and grass are backdropped by the red-stoned mountains.  However we did not stay long, as a large cloud was rising over the mountains to the west.  As we reached the end of the road, it started to rain, and then hailed.  I was worried that it would break the windshield, but we soon drove out of the storm.   Then just as we got back to town it opened up and poured rain and hailed again.  We sat in the vehicle at the campsite while we were pelted by marble sized hail.  Many of the campers here were out struggling to take down their awnings.  After the storm we saw a number of them on the roof of one of the trailers, working on the awning.

After supper Enid sat on the shaded side of the trailer to read and discovered that we had another flat tire, on a different tire this time.  It wasn’t as low as the previous one, but was obviously leaking, so I took it off, went to the tire repair shop again, and he was able to fix it.  One nice thing about a small town is that you can get repairs at all hours!

Wall Lake

Today we hiked from Alberta to British Columbia!  Well, that distance wasn’t too far, just about two kilometres.  Our destination was Wall Lake which is a quite nice walk into the Akamina-Kishnena provincial park.  The trail climbs until you reach the Alberta-British Columbia border, then it is quite level from there approximately another four kilometres to Wall Lake.

We started our day with a drive to Cameron Lake, which is not far beyond the Akamina Pass trailhead.  This lake has boat rentals, but early in the morning it wasn’t very busy, and is a very pretty lake nestled below towering mountains.  We met the German couple there who had been on the International Peace Hike with us two days ago.  They were going on a guided hike up to Summit Lake.  We however returned to the trailhead. 

There were two men and a woman getting ready to go hiking (at least we thought all three were going, but only the two men actually were on the trail).  As I’d neglected to bring the park map, we weren’t sure if this was the right trailhead to Wall Lake – in fact I couldn’t even remember the name of the lake – but these people had a rough map, so I could see that this was where we wanted to start.

Forum Falls

There were very few wildflowers along this trail.  However, there is a very nice waterfall, Forum Falls, which is just a little over 200 m off the main Akamina trail.  It was very cool by the falls, a relief as it was another very warm day.  There is a campground just a short distance past the falls junction on the main Akamina Pass trail, followed almost immediately by the junction to Wall Lake.  You cross the creek, and then it is a fairly level walk into the lake.  The lake is not large, maybe a kilometre across, and completely surrounded by high rock cliffs  rising sheer a thousand metres above the lake.  There was a slight current in the lake, which we could tell from the moving pollen covering the water, as well as some logs and ice floes that were drifting towards the exit stream.

There were a great number of downed trees along the lake shore.  Many of them were very large trees, half a metre in diameter, and they were all snapped off several feet above the ground, or else directly uprooted.  They had very recently been cut through to reopen the trail.  We followed the trail towards the end of the lake (and the toilet) but that was as far as we could go.  Beyond this they had not cut the trail, and it was a tangled mess of downed trees, and old snow banks, so it looked very much like an avalanche.

We ate lunch back about halfway from this point and then headed back.  Just as we rounded the first bend after leaving the lake, we came across a young park ranger.  He had a can of gas that he was loading into a backpack, and a mountain bike.  We talked to him and found that they had just cut out the trail on Friday, and the gas had been stashed in the bush.  He said they were not sure what had taken down the trees, but though it was a class 3 or 3 ½ avalanche.  They thought that perhaps an entire cliff of snow had broken free right to ground in the late spring.  The power of the avalanche must have been tremendous, as it is almost a kilometre across the lake from the base of the cliffs where the avalanche would have landed.

It was very hot in the afternoon.  We refilled Enid’s water bottle at the creek before leaving the lake, and the water was lovely and cold.  Then we filled it again when we got to the Akamina campsite.  The water was excellent and what was left made much nicer tea for supper than the heavily chlorinated water here in the trailer camp.

Flowers and mountains in prairie fields at Waterton

It is another beautiful, sunny and calm day.  We decided to try biking this morning, so I cleaned up the chains on our bikes, which were pretty dusty from the trip here.  I discovered that my front tire was flat, so pumped it up.  It seemed to be holding air, and the valve doesn’t seem to be leaking; however, to be safe we stopped at the bicycle shop here and bought a new tube.

We stopped at the outdoor store and got some Freesole to fix Enid’s shoe as well as her bike helmet (a pad has come unglued).  After that we peddled north up the hill to the Prince of Wales Hotel and took a look around the impressive lobby.  From there we continued up the highway until the bike path starts at Linnet Lake.  We stopped along the bike path several times to take pictures until we came to the road that branches off to the stable and a picnic site.

Not far down this road was a barricade.  We kept on going down the gravel road until we came to a major washout where the culvert was half uncovered.  After walking our bikes across this we continued on down the road to where it meets the Waterton River.  It appears that at times they ford the river here, but the river is very high right now so that would be impossible.

Along the way there and back we stopped several times to take pictures of the spectacular scenery.  There are large prairie fields filled with grasses and wild flowers with a backdrop of mountains towering over them in the background.  It was a pleasant way to spend a warm sunny morning.

Three-spot Mariposa Lily (Calochortus apiculatus)

The trailer tire was completely flat this morning, so I removed it after breakfast, and left it at the tiny service station here in Waterton.  The man who repairs tires was not there at the time, so I left a note with instructions hoping that it could get fixed, while we were out hiking.

We drove to the information centre to check on hiking trails, and got some advice that helped us decide to go to Lower Rowe Lake.  It was a beautiful hike, not too steep, with a large number of flowers along the way.  Many of the spring flowers were new ones for us.

Bighorn sheep

We ate lunch at the lake, and walked a bit farther to get a view of the waterfall that drops a couple of hundred feet from Upper Rowe Lake down to this one, before returning.  At about one third of the way back down the trail we spotted some bighorn sheep off to the side.  We walked as quietly as we could, hoping to get a better view.  We need not have been quiet!  The sheep came right down the path we were walking on, and the largest ram walked almost up to us, eyeing us, then finally stepped of the trail.  The three rams nonchalantly grazed in the brush just above us as we continued on down the path.

After our hike was completed we drove back to the information centre, and got more details about our hike for tomorrow, which is across the international border.  It’s a good thing we did, as we learned that we had to get our boat tickets for the return trip today, so we did that on the way back to the trailer.  We also picked up the tire which was repaired.  Then we went to the grocery store and bought a litre of ice cream.  That tasted good, as it has been a very warm day.

We left Prince Albert early Wednesday morning, and travelled to Bickleigh.  It was incredibly windy, from the southwest, which of course was the direction we were heading, so our gas mileage was very poor.  The wind was so strong that it broke one of the clamps holding the skirting on the side of the trailer.  We stopped just outside of Harris and tied the broken clamp to the frame of the trailer with a piece of rope.  We stopped in Rosetown to see if we could find some flat aluminum to use to fix it, but found nothing, so decided we might as well go to the farm to see Duane, as we were sure he’d have what we needed.

Duane manufactured two nice heavy clamps, one for each side of the trailer, so we have that fixed.  Enid drove in to Eston and picked up her mother and brought her to the farm overnight.  We left the farm on Thursday morning, a lovely day with almost no wind.  After leaving Florence at the lodge in Eston, we continued on west, and reached Waterton National Park in mid-afternoon.

Enid thought one of the tires on the trailer looked low.  By the time we had finished supper it was obvious that the tire was losing air, so we plan to see if we can get it fixed tomorrow.