Canada Day Week

The park we headed to after the last post (Kinbrook) was crazy busy. It was a sign of what was to come in the two weeks on either side of the Canada Day long weekend, especially since school is all finished now. In any case, we ate an awesome stir-fry and enjoyed a good sunset, surrounded by the soothing sounds of generators and many many people.
We went to Writing-On-Stone Provincial Park the next day, which only had 4 sites left by the time we got there, but somehow we got the best one in the grounds according to the lady at the desk. Sweet! We went on a great hike through the Hoodoos, and a landscape similar to the Badlands, where we saw so many deer grazing across the river, including wee little babies, and then we got to watch the male deer fend off some hungry coyotes as they tried to get down into the valley. Eventually, the coyotes gave up, but they gave us quite the show which was pretty awesome. Another deer on our side of the river also walked up to Chris (about 10 feet away) and didn't care at all that we were there. He just kept on munching the grass and cruising by.
The next morning was Canada Day. We had done some research and found out that Waterton National Park, in the far southwest end of Alberta, had a large campground of first-come-first-serve. So we packed up and headed out to get there by 11:30 am - two and half hours before check-in was even allowed. When we showed up, we were stopped and turned around because the entire park was already full for the whole weekend - and it was only Thursday morning! We were pretty disappointed because we had heard good things about that park, but in any case we started northward and stopped in Pincher Creek for gas. And while we were there, we actually got McDonald's - our first fast food of the trip (not including good old Canadian Timmy's). This town would get winds of 120 kms an hour and would last up to 20 days, so Chris was told by a new friend he met in line at McDonald's. Katie also bought a few things at Walmart to cheer us up, like Doritos and magazines. She was really excited about one magazine, because Chris loves trucks and cars, but when she pulled it out of the bag we realized it was an Extreme Radio Control Car magazine!! That definitely gave us both a laugh. It was a magazine on how to personalize and pimp out remote control cars!
We drove past two more campgrounds, both of which had signs in the front saying they were full. We were starting to think that we would be spending the weekend in our car. Finally, after a series of happenstance turns (Chris turned right instead of planned left because the van in front of us was driving like an idiot, for example), we ended up at Castle Falls Provincial Recreation Area. (Check out the pictures and also where we were on the map!) We didn't even know that Recreation Areas had camping, but this one said it did and so we checked it out. We saw one site open, and we almost called it a day right there and set up we were so excited, but we decided to keep looking. We even went over to the next grouping of sites, and there we found the best site we could possible imagine. It was 20-30 metres from the rushing rapids of beautiful Castle River (the picture on the top right is our backyard), surrounded by forest and hills, and there was really only one campsite within our sight. It was perfect! We set up right away, then drove back to town to make out first beer purchase of the trip. It was Canada Day, after all. We relaxed in the sun, and explored the rapids, and eventually met our neighbours. They were Craig and Anne-Marie, from Newfoundland, and they had moved to that area three years ago. We ended up hanging out around their fire later that night, chatting and laughing and having an amazing ending to an amazing Canada Day. It was awesome!
We spent the next three nights at that sight (although our fun neighbours left the next morning), since we knew that we weren't likely to find anything anywhere else, especially that nice. It got very very cold at night (about 4 degrees), and the days didn't warm up much past 15, but that was because we were in an area that got sprinkled with a tiny bit of rain every morning and was under the weather influence of some very big mountains nearby. We checked out the waterfall down the road, and played lots of Scrabble, and read, and just relaxed all weekend long. It was perfect. There was definitely action going on around us (one guy chainsawed himself in the leg on Friday, and we drove by police and a helicopter landing in a field on Sunday), but it was all out of earshot from us so we just got to enjoy the roaring of the water in our backyard.
Yesterday we moved on, and although we went to Park Lake Provincial Park first, the wind was so bad we wouldn't have been able to set up our tent. So we drove all the way back from near where we came from and went to Oldman River Provincial Recreation Area. Turns out all Recreation Areas are not made equal - our campsite had a stunning view of the garbage, the outhouse, and the highway bridge, while the roar of the water from the weekend got replaced with the rumble of trucks going by all night. We had thought it would be fun to check out the central region of Alberta, but we realized the parks just don't have much to offer so back we go into the foothills of the Rockies.
Today we went to Head-Smashed-In-Buffalo-Jump, which is a World Heritage Site that preserves the area where the Plains Indians would corral hundreds of Buffalo at a time and then scare them into stampeding over a cliff to their deaths. It has over 9,000 years of history that has been found in the form of bones and tools, and it was an amazing place. We ended up staying there for two and a half hours, as we explored the histories of the people and the land. We are staying in Livingstone Provincial Recreation Area tonight, and the next two nights are yet unknown. By the 8th, however, we will be up near Calgary (don't worry, we reserved a site Jen!), because we have got ourselves tickets to the Calgary Stampede on the 9th - both the rodeo and Grandstand evening show. It should be a blast, and we just found out Katie's cousin Martin will be there around the same time so hopefully we will be able to meet up. In the meantime, it's time to explore the foothills of the mountains.