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AlbertaMedicine Hat AdventuresAfter a beautiful trek through the Cypress Hills (absolutely no cypress grow there) along roads lined with prairie sunflowers, we arrived in Medicine Hat at dusk. Driving in to town, we had decided that we both craved Greek food, and would search for a bit of Athens before heading to Jim and Judi Hewitt’s, some good friends from Pine Point Lane. Navigating the strange grid of a city hemmed by two major rivers, we ended up in historic downtown Medicine Hat, which seemed to be characterized by everything being closed after 6 pm. We finally hit a dead end at the railway tracks and sat for a minute at the stop sign trying to decide which way to go, squinting at maps by the light of the cosmetic mirror in the car visor. As this was taking place, Chris noticed a man in a beat up red pickup next to us making signs to roll down the window. So I did, and a whiskered raggedy-clothes guy hollers out through his window to us ‘Do you know where you’re going?’. Maybe something about the bikes on the roof or the Ontario plates, or the Thule box of gear, or our indecision at the dead end railway stop sign tipped him off? We hollered back ‘No! We’re looking for a Greek restaurant’. He paused a moment, then said, “Follow me.” What else to do? As we weaved under underpasses and into an unlit, seedy section of town, we wondered whether we would soon be surrounded by armed robbers or if this guy really was honest. After about five minutes of travel through what seemed to be an industrial area, we spotted a lit sign advertising ‘Louie’s Athenian Restaurant’. The red pickup pulled in to the parking lot, and we gave a big thumbs up out the window. What a find! We would have never found the place – which turned out to be Medicine Hat’s only Greek restaurant - on our own. As we got out to thank our route finder, he said to tell Louie that Adolph had ‘hand-delivered’ us to his restaurant. We went in, delivered the message to Louie and had the best dolmades I’ve ever tasted! Thank goodness for the kindness of strangers.
Head Smashed In Buffalo JumpJim and Judi had some great suggestions for our travels, and among others, highly recommended that we stop in at Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump. This UNESCO heritage site protects and interprets the oldest, largest and best preserved buffalo jump on the western plains of North America. The interpretive center, built into the side of the cliff, told the story of the Blackfoot Nation’s reliance on buffalo, their life on the plains, and the use of the jump. For over 5,000 years, the cliff at Head-Smashed-In has been used by humans for mass buffalo massacres, in which skilled hunters carefully orchestrate and incite a buffalo stampede, funnelling a throng of buffalo to the edge and over the precipice. The number of buffalo killed then becomes the tribe’s winter stores. Interestingly, the name of the jump relates not to buffalo with their heads smashed in, but to a human. One day, a member of the Blackfoot Nation decided that he wanted to watch the buffalo fall not from the top of the jump, but from the base. Tucked into the cliff, he watched as the buffalo fell, piling up higher and higher. Eventually, the pile got so high that he became caught between them and the cliff. The next buffalo that tumbled off the cliff fell directly on the man, and it is his smashed-in head that the jump was thereafter known by. After strolling through the interpretive center, we walked around the top and base of the jump with the wind whipping around us. The winds that day were outrageous! At the top of the cliff, I had to hold on to the railing to stop myself from being bowled over by the gale! Did you know that the area of the jump – about 150 km south of Calgary – is the windiest place in Canada? Turns out it’s calm only 11% of the time. Windfarms peppered the ranches as we drove south to Waterton Lakes National Park, in search of some mountains to buffer the blasts. At Waterton Lakes we again took our bikes off the car and rode straight uphill into the altitude cold of one of the northern mountains. The red rock sandstone canyon at Waterton Lakes was gorgeous, and the bighorn sheep were incredibly tame.
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