Week Ten:  Dinosaurs, Hoodoos and an Irate Woman.

3 september 2018 - Powassan, Canada

Correction: The Banff Hotel was not built by Ukrainians, who’d come to live in Canada and become citizens. They had built the road to the hotel. At the start of WWII, the Canadian Government placed these people in POW camps.

Thanks, Marla for making sure my facts are accurate.


Thursday, August 9/18

Albert and Bijke dropped me off at the Tyrrell Museum in Drumheller. I was so excited to see the dinosaurs. A long, long time ago when I taught kindergarten, we always did a unit on dinosaurs. I was amazed how interested and knowledgable, my students were in this topic. They succeeded in getting me interested and excited about these prehistoric creatures.

The museum was already busy with families and groups of students. The exhibits were impressive and interactive and it didn’t take long or I was totally immersed in a time before humans roamed the earth.

I started the displays at Cretaceous Alberta, and learned that many dinosaur skeletons, bones and fossils had been found in this province. I passed the lab where I could watch scientists working on scraping away rock from bone using very small tools, while others were looking through microscopes or worked on computers. This was the same lab, Klazina and Alexander had been working in last week during their camp days.

Next, I took a tour through time, from Burgess Shale, 505 million years ago to the Devonian Reef, 375 million years ago, all the way to the Ice Age, only 12 thousand years ago. Those dates and timelines were baffling.

I loved the stories of people who had accidentally stumbled upon amazing findings of fossils and bones. Many discoveries were made during mining, the development of the tar sands and during the construction of roads and a large wind farm in Southern Alberta. Alberta used to be coastal land which explains why many remains of mammals, amphibians and fish species were found in this location.

After browsing through the gift shop and climbing the stairs to the Lookout Point, where there wasn’t much to see due to the smoke, it was time to meet my boys at the entrance of the museum.

It was too hot to do anything outside and we decided to drive to the Hoodoos just past our campground. Many tourists were walking the trail, but the metal grids were so hot, Bijke couldn't walk on them, so Albert went up and took all the pictures. The word hoodoo originates from the Hausa language of West Africa, meaning, ‘to arouse resentment, produce retribution’. Hoodoo was a distinct magic practice introduced to North America in the 18th century.  Aboriginal peoples used ‘hoodoo’ to refer to evil, super natural forces. Some believed hoodoos were giants turned to stone by the Great Spirit due to their evil deeds.

We thought Bijke would like to go for a swim and we drove to Little Fish Provincial Park. The gravel road was long and dusty and when we got there, we were disappointed. The campground was abandoned  and the surface of the lake was covered in a slimy, green substance. Bijke had a quick dip, but when we got home we showered him top to bottom to get rid off that nasty lake water.

Bijke: Why were A and M holding me down? I liked the ‘spray water’. It felt soo good.

It took a two-hour drive to Dinosaur Provincial Park. By ten in the morning, the temperature was already 29 degrees, but we decided to hike the trail into the Bad Lands. The sun, a bright orange ball, made the sky look eerie. We walked in a hazy landscape where no bright colours existed. The terrain was steep and uneven with jagged outcrops, caves, stairs and dangerous rocks to step on. My fear of falling returned, but I took my time and finished the trail, still in one piece. We entered the campground where Romkje, Lauchlin, Klazina and Alexander had stayed on their way to Banff. The campground was amazing and smack in the middle of the Bad Lands. There were fossil displays and tours to see dinosaur bones still embedded in the rocks.

Bijke: The trail was steep and fun with rocks to jump off, but of course I had to SLOW DOWN and wait for M. I didn’t get it why she didn’t jump and run on this fun trail.

We ate lunch at a park in the town of Brooks and even though we were shaded by trees, it was uncomfortably hot.

Following the Trans Canada Highway to Medicine Hat, we watched the temperature climb to 40 degrees.

The fields were dry and desert like, just as in Washington State. Only where farmers irrigated the land, crops were growing. In one field, we saw six enormous combines riding side by side harvesting the golden, ripe wheat. Close to Medicine Hat the scenery once again changed to Bad Lands.

From the Gas Campground, which was situated on the escarpment of Medicine Hat, we overlooked the Bad lands, the Trans Canada Highway and the train tracks. We soon discovered that long freight trains passed by continuously and we feared for a sleepless night.

It was 42 degrees when we went to the Superstore and bought a pre-made salad. Both of us had never experienced these high temperatures in our lives and we worried about Bijke.

Next to the campground were rows and rows of concentrated hot water solar collectors, which turned the water into steam.

After an uncomfortable night, we woke up to a much cooler morning and decided to do something first thing, before the heat would become too much. We visited the world’s largest tee-pee, which had been installed in Medicine Hat after it was showcased in Calgary during the 1988 Olympic Winter Games.

It was an impressive structure. All the paintings inside the tee-pee represented the history of the People of the Plains. I was struck by the painting that explained how Medicine Hat got its name. I have tried to summarize and adapt the story told by Dan Weasel Moccasin of the Blackfoot Confederacy.

Long, long ago a man named Eagle Birth fell in love with another man’s wife. They left their tribe and traveled to an area, where hunting wildlife to feed themselves was difficult. One day the woman spotted a headdress among the cliffs, but when they looked closely, they discovered it was just a piece of sage-brush shaped like a headdress. That night, a merman spoke to Eagle Birth in his dreams. He asked for a human. In return Eagle Birth would be given special hunting powers. First Eagle Birth tried to fool the merman by giving him the body of a dog, but the enraged merman threw the dog back. The next night the merman returned to eagle Birth in his dreams and asked again for a human.

While Eagle Birth tried to think of a solution, a stranger wearing a lynx hat appeared. He killed the stranger and dove into the water carrying the body. He found the merman in a large tee-pee at the bottom of the river.

As thanks the merman gave Eagle Birth the tee-pee and the power to hunt birds and animals. When an otter asked Eagle Birth for the Lynx’ hat, he gave it to him and Eagle Birth was allowed to draw an otter on his tee-pee.

With his new powers, Eagle Birth captured many eagles and other wildlife. The couple returned to their tribe and gave eagle feathers and hides to the former husband, who gladly accepted these gifts.

Eagle Birth built a tee-pee with the sign of the otter and the waves of the river on it. He made a headdress out of eagle feathers like the one they had discovered. After he told his story to the tribe the area became known as Eagle Trail Feather Headdress or Medicine Hat.

I own a collection of 'Pourquoi Tales' and was happy to add this tale. 
After our visit to the tee-pee, we followed a trail through the Bad Lands. The breeze made our hike bearable.

We spent the afternoon at the snail house and met a couple from Wisconsin, who had ordered a trailer like ours, but had never been in one. So they got the one minute tour and became excited. Unfortunately, they will have to wait till June 2019, before they will travel with it.

That same afternoon, another couple recognized the Friesian flag on our trailer and came over to tell us that they had relatives in Friesland.

In the evening, sirens alerted us to a brush fire across the Trans Canada Highway. The winds started whipping around which resulted in us closing all the windows and turning off the fan.

Just east of Medicine Hat, on the Trans Canada Highway, stood a large buffalo bull on the side of the road. As we hadn’t seen much wildlife in BC or Alberta we assumed it was a wild buffalo, but we soon saw a sign, ‘Buffalo Ranch’, and our assumption was squashed.

About an hour later a Charleroy bull started crossing the highway, but of course he wasn’t part of the wildlife scene either.

The grey skies, with every now and then a few scattered showers, accompanied us to the town of Chaplin. The town is known for its salt dunes. As there was no picnic area, we ate lunch at an abandoned campground in Chaplin, right at the salt dunes. During lunch the wind rocked our snail house and Bijke gave us frightening glares.

When we finally arrived in Moose Jaw, we didn’t see any signs to Buffalo Pound Provincial Park. A D-tour sign and a long gravel road brought us to the campground. We drove through endless farmers fields, until we came to an oasis - the campground, which was in the middle of ... the bad lands.

We found a quiet site, but the ground was uneven and we had to prop up one wheel of the trailer with several blocks.

Buffalo Pound Lake was much larger than we had expected and it was surrounded by the hills of the Bad Lands. We went for a long walk visiting the various campgrounds that are all connected by gravel roads.

That evening we planned the last leg of our trip. No wifi our cell service, at the site, but we were certain there would be a signal at the campground office.

We slept like logs and woke up to the songs of the crows at six in the morning.

We bummed around till lunch time and then drove into Moose Jaw. We sat in the Starbucks parking lot to catch up and answer emails. It was only 18 degrees, when we returned home. The sky was clear, the smoke had lifted and we even saw some blue patches. We took Bijke to the Buffalo Pound Lookout, where we admired the view of the lake and the hills.

We woke up to a cool crisp morning and again a clear blue sky. Last night we had found three campgrounds for our second last week of our trip. We also had discovered cell service at the Buffalo Pound Lookout. We called the campgrounds and found sites.

A few bisons, at the Buffalo Range, were resting in the shade under the trees.

Next we drove to the Nicolle Flats nature Centre and walked the Marsh Boardwalk trail. Bijke thought he was going for a swim with all that water on either side of the boardwalk. He huffed and puffed and pulled. At the end of the trail we sat down and watched the American Coots swim nearby and a muskrat swam underneath the boards.

We were sorry to leave this beautiful park. We enjoyed the peace and quiet and the scenery.

The first part of the road was in bad shape as we drove about 50 km/h through fields of wheat and other grains. As soon as we reached Regina we followed a rough and bumpy detour. The empties in the trunk rattled and clanked and the once that were still full, we were sure, had turned into champagne.

At Qu’ Appelle, we left the highway just before the monastery, where I had attended a writer’s retreat with Children’s Author, Kit Pearson, in 2001. I would have loved to see the monastery again, but the road took us on the scenic route. It would not have been a simple task to turn a car with a trailer around.

We stopped at the info centre at Fort Qu’Appelle, but there was so much road construction, it wasn’t worth exploring the area.

The roads, after the construction zone ended, didn’t show much improvement and the bumpy road rattled the contents of our snail house. When the dog bed on our bed had moved, we realized how bad the road was. With no other options for lunch, but another sand and gravel depot, we stopped for a break.

For a while, we drove through fields of flax, in some areas the flax had already been cut. 

In Manitoba, the landscape changed again. The fields looked much healthier, they must have received more precipitation this summer, than the previous prairie provinces. We passed little towns with picturesque churches and learned that this area was home to many Ukrainian immigrants. The landscape was less flat, with rolling hills and many lakes. We lost another hour and didn’t arrive at the campground in Wasagaming until after five. This campground was the complete opposite of Buffalo pound P.P. Big rigs stood side by side with hardly any space between them. We were assigned a very small space between two seasonal monsters.

As we were trying to level the snail house a woman came running towards us, yelling, “That’s our spot! We’ve always had that spot! We’ve had that spot for the last five years and now they gave it to you and they gave us a tiny spot. We can’t even get in there and we can’t even have the slide-outs out!”

Albert and I were speechless, until the husband joined his wife and said, “There’s another site, two over, that’s bigger.”

“Oh, no,” she answered, “then we’re too far away from our friends and we party all night. We need this spot!”

We didn’t particularly like our site, so we looked at the bigger spot and decided it would be better to be away from these partygoers. It actually turned out for the better. The seasonal campers on either side of us, didn’t show up and we had a quiet night.

We planned our excursion for tomorrow, to Riding Mountain National Park. The map showed lakes and many trails, so we hope that Bijke will get lucky and have another swim. 

Foto’s

2 Reacties

  1. Heather:
    4 september 2018
    Can't wait for you to get home with pictures!
  2. Jennifer:
    5 september 2018
    I remember how magically awful the Bad Lands were, too, and how beautiful Buffalo Pound was. Thanks for sharing your journey in writing!