Wednesday, September 19, 2012
Cheri Sept-18-12
11:30 AM | 
Posted by
Sharp's Travels
We were on the road by 6pm. We got to watch a beautiful sunrise this morning as we motored down the road. As soon as it got light and we could find a McDonalds where we could pull in we grabbed a cup of coffee and got the blog ready to upload and checked e-mails.
We traveled through Calgary. Everything went well. We were on the south side by 10am.
We happened upon an honest to goodness cattle drive. We were on a side road and they wanted to drive the cattle across the road to the pasture on the other side. The cowboys were all dressed in the chaps and western hats. They even had a cattle dog, driving the heard. It was fun to watch.
Some of our tour group had told us about Head Smashed in Buffalo Jump located about 10 miles off HWY 2 just before we got to the junction of HWY 2 & HWY 3. We spent 2 hours there. A long time ago, according to one legend, the people were driving buffalo over these cliffs. A young brave wanted to watch the buffalo tumbling past. Standing under the shelter of a ledge, as if behind a waterfall, he watched the great beasts fall. The hunt was unusually good that day and as the bodies piled up, he became trapped between the animals and the cliffs. When his people came to do the butchering, they found him with his skull crushed by the weight of the buffalo carcasses. Thus, they named this place “Head Smashed In”. There is evidence of human activity in this region of North America for at least 11,000 yrs. This buffalo jump bear’s witness to a custom practiced by native people on the Great Plains for nearly 6,000 yrs. These communal bison hunts required much organization and special skills to lure buffalo from the gathering basin into the drive lanes and finally over the cliffs.
We watched the movie on this event and toured the wonderfully laid out museum. We also took the walk up to the cliff where the actually event happened. It was all so interesting.
Just as we got back on the road, we spotted a moose. The poor thing was lost and we found it! It was in a pasture wandering in some tall weeds right along the highway. I wanted another moose to add to my animal card and I got one.
We arrived at the border around 4pm. There was quite a backup so it took us about 20 minutes before we crossed over into the U.S.
The rest of our day was long. Our pretty trees were all gone and everything looked like dry prairie land. The last hour went by real slow but finally we arrived at our campground in Great Falls, MT at 6:30pm. We checked in, got set up and crashed. Tomorrow will be a busy day getting ready for our journey into Wisconsin.
To see pictures of the day click on this link https://picasaweb.google.com/sharpstravels then click on album: Edmonton to Great Falls.
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