Adventures in the Villa

The Airstreams left the campground in Drumheller in groups of twos and threes (and the occasional one…) as we headed south. Our first destination today is the Bar U Ranch, just south of Longview, AB. We arrived and parked in a large grass field. No fancy RV park tonight!

Founded in 1882 as the Northwest Cattle Company, the Bar U Ranch was one of the first and most enduring of the large corporate ranches established in southern Alberta.

Three key personalities guided the ranch through seven decades of change up to 1950: Fred Stimson set the foundation and infrastructure for the Bar U Ranch, which under George Lane achieved international repute as a center of breeding excellence for cattle and purebred Percheron horses. Patrick Burns and his company modernized the ranch by replacing horses with tractors and streamlined operations which took the Bar U though the depression and World War II.

The Bar U Ranch has one of the largest collections of original ranch buildings in Canada. Treasures include the blacksmith shop, harness repair shop, roundup camp and saddlehorse barn. Also on display are the cookhouse and the Percheron horse barns.

We had a guided tour through the various buildings, learning about life on the ranch 100 years ago.

We gathered for dinner in the Visitors Center. We heard a speaker talk about the history of Alberta, homesteading, and the various ways the people of early Alberta worked to maintain their identity despite ranchers coming in from the south (USA) and pioneers coming in from the east via the railroad. We also had a lovely catered dinner with fresh berry pies for dessert…

On the morning of Friday, June 21, we gathered for morning coffee and a drivers’ meeting…

After our meeting we departed for the Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump. This is an historical site commemorating the methods the Blackfoot people originally hunted Buffalo.

In the fall, the bands (small communities of the Blackfoot) would gradually shift to their wintering areas and prepare the bison jumps and pounds. Several bands might join together at particularly good sites, such as Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump. As the bison moved into the area, drawn by water and richer forage than the burned-dry summer grasses, the bands would prepare by building rock cairns, brush barricades, and the like,. When the time was right, they would herd the bison into a stampede. As the path grew narrower the bison approached the steep cliff, tumbling over to their death on the rocks below. This was the traditional method of hunting bison before the introduction of horses and guns.

The people would prepare dry meat and pemmican for the winter. Such dry food stores were used as emergency supplies for those times when the bison were not near. At the end of the fall, the Blackfoot would move to their winter camp locales.

Today the cliff in only about 35 feet high. Thousands of years ago it would have been more than 70 feet tall…

The visitor center now sits on one area of the cliffs… Inside the visitor center they show a reproduction of buffalo falling on the cliff….

Seen from below…

And seen from the top…

There was an excellent short movie to watch. It showed how the people herded and eventually stampeded the buffalo over the cliff… Any buffalo that survived the fall was killed, lest they escape and go back and tell the other buffalo what went on…

In the 1880s the buffalo were exterminated by over hunting, and the Blackfoot could no longer live their traditional lifestyle.

The Airstreams left again, this time heading west into British Columbia, via the Crowsnest Highway, the lowest highway crossing the Continental Divide, at about 5,100 feet.

We arrived at Fairmont Hot Springs. Happy Hours ensued.

On Saturday, June 22, we had a free day to catch up on our lives and enjoy the recreational opportunities in the area.

We, of course, chose to enjoy the hot mineral water pools… These are not chlorinated swimming pools. This is hot mineral water piped in from the natural springs. Every night they drain the pools into the local creek, and fresh mineral water is used to fill the pools again.

In the evening we gathered for another Drivers Meeting, then we enjoyed a “home cooked” meal, prepared by Stacy and Amy, with help from many others…

To celebrate our 50th wedding anniversary we were serenaded by our in-house bag-piper…

We returned to the Villa. An enjoyable time was had by all…

We headed out from Glacier early Monday morning. Snow is expected, and we want to get far down the road before it hits…

Soon we were at the border… All went well, with little waiting.

Alberta is very much an open, rangeland area…

We arrived in Drumheller, AB. This is a town with a history of cattle, mining, and Dinosaurs…

Many of the caravaners had already arrived. The Caravan actually starts tomorrow, so we are just one day early.

We started off on the right foot by having a Happy Hour with all the Airstreamers.

We returned to the Villa…

Tuesday, June 18, is the official first day of the caravan. We received our “Travel Guide”, a 3-ring binder full of information about everything we will be doing. We will see a dinosaur museum, an historic ranch (one of the country’s largest in its heyday), a “Buffalo Jump”, a hot springs resort, Lake Louise, Kootenay Plains, Jasper National Park, Banff National Park, and the Calgary Stampede. (More on the Stampede later…)

The last of the caravaners arrived this day.

We spent the day greeting others, walking along the adjacent river, and getting ready for our Welcome Meeting this evening.

On Wednesday, June 19, we drove to the local dinosaur museum. We toured the museum until all the lights went out… Oops!

Since we had planned to eat lunch in the museum cafe, we instead drove back to the Airstreams and had lunch on our own. Then we drove back to the museum and gathered for our guided walk to see the “Badlands”

They look pretty bad to me…

The Badlands were formed by the giant inland sea freezing during the ice age. As the ice melted, glaciers scraped all the loose sediment away leaving these hills and valleys. Since the dinosaurs also died out during this period, these hills are full of dinosaur bones…

It was very interesting. We could see “hoodoos” forming, and we could see dinosaur bones in the sandstone beneath our feet…

That evening we had a dinner at a local landmark, the Last Chance Saloon.

Food was good and all the Airstreamers appeared to enjoy themselves.

And an enjoyable time was had by all..

Thursday, June 13, we headed northwest from Helena towards Glacier National Park. There was nots of construction, gravel roads, “follow me” pilot trucks leading single file traffic, very slowly,

But we eventually arrived at the outskirts of the East side of Glacier, at the town of St. Mary. The mountains are spectacular. Much more sharpley jagged than, say, the Grand Tetons…

We settled into the KOA in St. Mary…

We were happy to slide out the slide out, and settle in for our four day stay.

Sun sets at around 9:30 here – very odd. We haven’t seen darkness in several days…

So we had a nice dinner and relaxed a bit…

On Friday, June 14, we entered the park… We stopped at the Visitors’ Center and got oriented. We watched a film about the park, and we heard an interesting talk from a ranger about Bears. There are Grizzly Bears and Black Bears in Glacier. California only has Black Bears, which are not nearly as dangerous as Grizzlies. (California Golden Bears are a totally differently altogether. Go Bears!) We are unlikely to see any bears unless we are hiking into the back country, which we’re not…

The famous road that everyone loves to drive from East Glacier to West Glacier (and vice versa) is called Going-To-The-Sun Road. However, since the park has only been open less than two weeks (and there was five feet of snow on the ground when it opened…) the road is impassable after about 14 miles. But we drove it to the end and turned around…

Here is the iconic photo that everyone puts on their maps and brochures:

This is Lake St. Mary…

We stopped for lunch along the way…

After driving all day we needed a nice dinner. A few miles north of St. Mary is the village of Many Glacier. There is another big lake, and, best of all, a 1920s era “National Park Lodge” I love these buildings. We saw them at Grand Canyon (North Rim), and at Yellowstone, and at Yosemite… This one is right on the lake and is quite spectacular…

I took a short nap out on the deck. (Very short – it is about 39 degrees here…

Inside the lodge are these great tall spaces!

And giant fireplaces…

We had a lovely dinner with cocktails and wine…

And we returned to the Villa…

On Saturday the 15th we went on a boat tour of Upper St. Mary Lake…

Our boat was operated by two young ladies; the Captain let us know it was her first time as Captain on one of these boats.

Happily, the boats are enclosed, because it is VERY COLD!

Another iconic photo taken at the north end of the lake…

We docked and after a short walk we were treated to a very loud waterfall.

Back on the boat we saw many fantastic mountains…

And we returned to the Villa.

Sunday, June 16, was a rest day. We (Lynda) did laundry. I dumped tanks, pulled in the slide-out, and pulled our passports out of the safe. Tomorrow we enter Canada!

And an enjoyable time was had by all…

We’re back! Our last post (and our last long adventure) was November, 2012. We had fully baked plans to visit Iowa, Illinois, Wisconsin, and Michigan in the summer of 2023, but we were forced to cancel due to health reasons. Luckily, not ours…

So we are now on our way to Alberta, Canada, birthplace of my father. (More on that later…)

We left Redlands at 9:00am on June 9, 2024. Coincidentally, 7 years ago, on June 10,2017, we left Irvine on the first of our long post-retirement trips, which included an Airstream Club Caravan starting in Rhode Island, traveling north through New England, then New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, and Prince Edward Island… You can find this trip in the archives of this website.

Today was a relatively easy drive to Mesquite, Nevada. We stayed in an RV park so far out it was in Arizona… It was 105 degrees, but it was a clean and well-equipped park…

But we’re moving on. We left Monday morning and traveled from Arizona to Nevada, into Arizona again, then into Utah. Typical views in Utah:

We stopped for lunch… As a rule we avoid Mexican restaurants outside of California (with rare exceptions…). But we had to try Beaver Tacos!

Turns out we were in the town of Beaver, Idaho. We ordered “mini street tacos”. Even Idaho cant mess up carnitas, cilantro, and onions. Pretty good!

They even had an interesting mottos on their wall…

Our lunch the next day, in Pocatello, was in an interesting Italian restaurant, with a mural painted on the front:

We enjoyed “lighter Fare”:

As we continued north the mountains continued to be spectacular…

Then we noticed a small problem. While traveling through Provo, Utah, a passing car threw up a rock that cracked our windshield. A small crack, 3″ long. No – 4″. Wait! 5″. We pulled into a rest stop, coincidently alongside a few other Airstreams.

But we’re in Montana, heading to our reserved RV park in Butte. We decided the windshield crack needed attention before we entered Canada. After a quick insurance claim on the iPhone and a few phone calls, we had cancelled our reservation in Butte, added a reservation in Helena, and we soon found ourselves at Big Sky Glass:

Ever seen a Silverado without a windshield?

It will take 4 hours to replace the windshield. So we walked over to Shelli’s Country Cafe for lunch. What did we order? Cheese Quesadilla!

By 6:30pm we were checked into the KOA in Helena.

Tomorrow: Glacier National Park!

And an enjoyable time was had by all…