Waterton Lakes and Surrounds

Leaving Writing on Stone we went first to Lethbridge on the hope of finding a motel for the evening. It was well and truly time to break the labor of camping for the 'luxury' of bedding in-doors, adjacent 'washroom' facilities and the mindlessness of cable tv plus air conditioning!  Lethbridge is a pretty big place so we had cause for optimism. Sadly though there was an 'event' which meant that  every motel room within cooee was taken. We had to drive to Fort Macleod to find accommodation and we got a neat little room for 82 bucks including tax which ticked the above boxes!! The owner/ manager was an Indian guy, originally from Gujurat and had spent much of his youth in Nairobi - I encouraged him to dust off his basic swahilli.

From here we went to 'Head Smashed In Buffalo Jump' - a museum which again was rich in Black Foot culture. Now to simply say it is a museum under sells it a little. Again we have very much an in-situ museum built at the actual site where Black foot people and their descendants hunted for Buffalo. They had a variety of methods but one involved them luring and driving the herd off a cliff - hence buffalo jump. The technique, according, to the archaeology, was both successful and long lasting although the coming of the horse allowed other less risky methods to develop. Anyway the museum interprets the land, the people, and the buffalo and, in particular, the hunting method practised at the site. There is also a short film which dramatises the proceedings. Btw - The Black Foot Indians apparently have been named by virtue of a joke which has stuck. Apparently there was a big gathering of many tribes to meet the government way back when for the purpose of signing treaties[?]. The 'Black foot' Tribe were of the prairies and had to cross a vast stretch that had recently burned and, as a result their moccasins had become pitch black with soot. Some of the other Indians yelled out hey here come the Black Foot....and the name stuck. [Clayton, at Writing on Stone was telling us too that his Clan, the Blood, was supposed to have been the Weasel Clan however the Black Foot words for Blood and Weasel are very similar and a mistake was made in translation.]

enroute to Waterton

The mountains of Waterton meet the Prairie

And then to Waterton Lakes National Park, the smallest park in the Rockies but a spectacular one nonetheless. The National Park of Waterton makes a bit of the fact that the park preserves not only part of the Rocky Mountains but the prairie lands east of the mountains. The Park extends to the border but the protected area continues south through Glacier NP in Montana. Together they are known as the Peace Parks.

We stayed at Waterton Springs, an area just outside the Park's border.

Perhaps to emphasise its prairie street cred WNP has established a large Bison Paddock. The paddock is pretty big and features rolling hills, several small lakes, little valleys filled with a variety of shrubs but mostly prairie grassland and many flowers, which at this time of the year were in full bloom. Oh and about a dozen or so Bison which obviously not so long ago would have been a legitimate and common part of this grassland ecosystem.   The paddock is big enough that it takes quite a while to drive around and big enough such that our first drive through revealed no bison. But when you do see them you can convince yourself that they are wild animals and that the high fence bordering this patch of prairie is invisible.

Explored the park.

Red Rock Canyon

Waterton Lakes - you can take a boat to Montana from here

Cameron Falls

The Cowgirls - Hope, Millie and Tacey

The Magnificent ...........five?

On our last morning in the Waterton area we took the kids for a trail ride at a nearby ranch. The ride was an hour and a half but in the event was over two hours. It was mostly walking and the occasional trot but for us - all very inexperienced riders it was fine and the young girls, who were our guides, were nice, friendly and chatty and particularly attentive to the equally chatty to Millie.

As we drove out of Waterton village for the last time we saw our last?] grizzly feeding on a not-so-distant hillside.

We decided to drive all the way back to Nakusp to the cheers of the kids, arriving there about midnight.