On Monday we left our campsite to visit our old friend Yoka. We have known her for a long time and even traveled around Europe with her in 1970. She has been living in Alberta for many years so it was great to catch up with her. Wednesday morning we hit the road again. We traveled south of Calgary, along an interesting road called the "cowboy trail". All along this road were cattle ranches and some horse ranches. The filming of "Heartland" took place in this area, and the lady in the bakeshop told us that they were filming right now at her mother's dairy farm! There have been many other movies made in this area that needed the ranch landscape. Lovely road and area but a little too isolated for me! We turned west right near the Alberta/US border and drove through a beautiful area called the Crowsnest Pass. We were back in the mountains again! Up one hill and down another. We came across an area called "Frank Slide". Back in 1903 there had been a little mining village called Frank. Early one morning in 1903 while everyone lay sleeping, the mountain right beside the village started toppling, causing a huge rock slide right on top of the outskirts of the village,killing 100 people. There was a passenger train heading to the area at the same time and luckily one of the villagers ran down the track and was able to stop the train on time so not more lives were lost.
As we traveled along, we crossed the Continental Divide. This is a drainage basin that runs through Alberta south all the way to South America. All the rivers running east of this drain run in an easterly direction toward the Atlantic Ocean and all the rivers west of this run the other way toward the Pacific Ocean.
Tonight we are staying in Nelson, BC. Surrounded by mountains. Our campground is right on Lake Kokanee, which is nice because it is so hot. Today was about 32 degrees. It has been unusually hot these last few weeks with no rain. Nice for us but not for forest fires: there are at least 12 of them burning right now in the Rockies and so there has been a real haze around the mountains in the last few days. Apparently the smoke/haze can be seen all the way to Manitoba. Did not see any actual flames, though!

Old friends: more than 45 years!

RCMP Musical Ride Calgary Stampede

Heartland country

Frank Slide

Frank slide (note top of mountain is gone since it fell over on the village)

Dinosaur head found at Frank Slide

We met this interesting man who was cycling from Banff to Mexico through the Continental Divide by himself. He had started 2 days ago in Banff and was only using remote trails, not highways. He already encountered 3 grizzlies! Grover loved his bike.

Continental Divide