Annie and Fos in Canada 2023

Well, we are having our last day in Canada before flying home tonight. The weather is beautiful in Vancouver and although we are looking forward to getting home, it will be sad to finish a great trip. See you soon, Annie and Fos Practising my ski jumps at Revelstoke Ski jump slope Bowen Island Logger Show Axe throwing Pole climb

  Outlaw Calgary was gearing up for the Calgary Stampede while we were in town. Think Sydney Royal on steroids with a focus on rodeo events and chuckwagon races similar to Ben Hur chariot races. 'Outlaw' was the biggest, baddest, bucking bull ever. He reached celebrity status with his record of only 2 successful 8 second rides from 71 attempts from the world's best cowboys. Although Calgary likes to promote itself as a cowboy town, it was really built from oil money. Lots of oil money. There are nearly as many oil wells in the paddocks surrounding the city as there are cows. Petrol is cheap and huge pick up trucks dominate the massive road system.

Like many towns on the western foothills of the Rockies, Grande Cache began as a fur trading depot when European trappers first came to the area chasing wealth from pelts of beaver, martin and anything else they could trap or shoot. Old traditions die hard and the gift shop at today's tourist information centre still sells pelts. Beaver, martin, bobcat, otter, lynx and even wolf and bison skins were available. 

 We don't go to many museums but we have been to a few really good ones lately. Head Smashed In Buffalo Jump is a historic site in southern Alberta near where the prairies meet the Rockies.  The museum is located at one of the sites where the Blackfoot people used to drive herds of bison (buffalo) over a cliff as a method of gathering their main source of sustenance. The building is set into the ridge with most of it underground.  Large tribes/communities relied on bison for their food, clothing and shelters (tipis). Herds used to number in the hundreds of thousands and when they were wiped out in the 1870-1880s the Blackfoot and other tribes like them lost their mode of survival. Completely.   We then drove through part of the Canadian Badlands to Dinosaur Provincial Park where we camped. More big dinosaur fossils have been found here than anywhere else on earth and the fantastic Royal Tyrrell Museum in nearby Drumheller is part laboratory part public museum. It con...