Week Two: Glacier, Waterton, Blackfoot Buffalo Jump, Friendly Mennonites, Pulling Grass, and Eating Prairie Oysters

The second week of our road trip is over and Emily and I are back in her apartment in Winnipeg.   Since she is coming to the States for the semester and the guy who is renting her Winnipeg room is already here, we are sleeping in the living room.  I'm not complaining though, I think the carpeted floor will feel better than the cold hard ground of the Northern Rockies.  We are here for another day and then driving toward home.  We have changed our plans, however, and are no longer going to Chicago.  We are instead going to drive through Canada.  We will go through the northern part or Ontario then into Ottawa and back into NY via Alexandria Bay.  Our time in Montana got cut short because we had to do vegetation clipping in Grasslands for a couple days.  This gave us a few extra days, which is why we are taking the longer, more scenic route home.  If we are lucky its possible we will see some moose or even wolves or bears.

As you can see from the title of this post, a lot happened during the second leg of our trip.  When last I wrote we had a late start because of the snow and the cold.  We eventually made it back into the park and took a short hike to a tall waterfall.  Even though the waterfall was only one mile in from the road we spend four hours hiking, photographing, and climbing the nearby rockslide before returning to the van.  Climbing up the steep mountain slope was scary, but the view was worth it.  Emily is afraid of heights, but she climbed up after me and we sat enjoying the scene together.  On the way down she was nervous and careful, that is until I spotted an interesting bird near the bottom and she deftly scrambled down faster than me in order to get a good look with her binoculars.  The bird turned out to be a "dipper," which was a new one for her.

We camped the night in an area called Many Glacier and headed up to the Canadian side of the park, called Waterton National Park.  We took a nice hike there and slept the night in the nearby town of Lethbridge.  We stayed in the home of a very nice retired Mennonite couple.  Their daughter is Emily's friend, and she told us to call them up.  We weren't the first wayfaring strangers to stay at the house.  In fact, we didn't even make the first page of the guest book we signed before leaving.  After an early breakfast with the couple we went to a place called Head Smashed In Buffalo Jump.  This is a historical site which the Blachfoot Native Americans and their ancestors had used to kill bison for around 5,000 years.  Basically the Buffalo jumps were cliffs that the Native people stampeded herds of 75+ bison over.  The interpretive center at the site was really nice and we got lucky because it was a special cultural weekend in the province of Alberta.  Not only did we get in free, but there were Blackfoot drumming and dancing performances, arts and jewelry displays, authentic Blackfoot food, and a tour given by a local Blackfoot member.

The last two days were spent back at Grasslands National Park in Saskatchewan.  Because Emily is a graduate student, we had to stop there to do some work.  We spend a day and a half collecting vegetation samples on the prairie.  These will be used later to help understand the effects of cattle grazing on mixed grassland prairie vegetation.  The work was not much fun, but it was nice to be out on the prairie with Emily.  We made a good team.  

The last thing I'll tell you is that I have been informally inducted into the Saskatchewan rancher community.  While in Grasslands we went to eat dinner with the Highsaw family.  The last time we ate with them they joked that they would cook up some prairie oysters for me.  "Prairie oysters" is the polite way of saying "calf nuts," which is what they are.  When they neuter their calves, the ranchers keep the testicles to fry up later.  This time when we got to their house they hadn't forgotten, and I didn't leave before having eaten three of the battered and fried oysters.  Emily took a photo of me eating one.  If I get a hold of it, I'll post it on here.

This little guy is called a "pika."