Enroute to Waterton Lakes – Day 3

We left Calgary this morning just after 8, and started our tour with a visit to a geological site just outside the town of Okotoks. 
The following was taken from the website – https://www.alberta.ca/okotoks-erratic-big-rock.aspx.
Visible from considerable distance across the relatively flat terrain of the prairie landscape, ‘Big Rock’ is an enormous glacial erratic. The 16,500-tonne (18,200-ton) boulder transported far from its mountainous place of origin by a rockslide then by a glacial sheet of ice between 10,000 to 30,000 years ago to its present-day location.  Big Rock was originally part of a mountain formation in what is now Jasper National Park. During the last ice age – about 30,000 years ago – a large rockslide crashed debris onto the surface of a glacier that occupied the present day Athabasca River valley, and this debris, including Big Rock, was carried out of the mountains on the glacial surface. As the ice melted and the glacier retreated to the mountains, the rocky debris, including this huge erratic, were deposited across the prairies.

The Indigenous Blackfoot peoples name for the erratic is derived from their word for rock, which is “okatok.”

A traditional Blackfoot story describes how Big Rock came to feature the large split down its middle:

One hot summer day, Napi, the supernatural trickster of the Blackfoot peoples, rested on the rock because the day was warm and he was tired. He spread his robe on the rock, telling the rock to keep the robe in return for letting Napi rest there. Suddenly, the weather changed and Napi became cold as the wind whistled and the rain fell. Napi asked the rock to return his robe, but the rock refused. Napi got mad and just took the clothing. As he strolled away, he heard a loud noise and turning, he saw the rock was rolling after him. Napi ran for his life. The deer, the bison and the pronghorn sheep were Napi’s friends, and they tried to stop the rock by running in front of it. The rock rolled over them. Napi’s last chance was to call on the bats for help. Fortunately, they did better than their hoofed neighbours did, and by diving at the rock and colliding with it, one of them finally hit the rock just right and it broke into two pieces.

The tale provides helpful caution against taking back what you have given away.

The Okotoks Erratic – made up of quartzite that is light grey, pink, to purplish in colour – measures about 9-metres tall, 41-metres long and 18-metres wide, or about the size of a three-storey apartment building.

It is a piece of the Gog Formation; layers of sediment deposited between 600 million and 520 million years ago in a shallow sea eons before the uplift of the Rocky Mountains.

• As time passed, the sediment was buried as layer upon layer built up four kilometres deep in places.
• The heat and pressure generated by the weight of the overlying sediments compacted the sand grains and cemented them into an extremely hard, durable rock called quartzite.

Quartzite is slippery to climb and although it is hard, pieces can break off.
Here is Chan Thor our Tour Director –
After we all got to walk around the ROCK, it was off to our next stop – Longview for Jerky.  That aroma you smell as you’re walking down Longview’s main street can only mean one thing. You’ve arrived at the mecca of cowboy snacks – the Longview Jerkey Shop. Who could guess that a chewy, sometimes salty, sweet, spicy or smoky concoction could have such a huge fan following? But it’s true, the third-generation Longview Jerkey is legendary. Not just locally, but from the Hollywood hills to the foothills of Alberta and beyond. Countless Hollywood stars, everyday cowboys, and road-trippers have made a pilgrimage to the tiny shop, established in 1978. It’s said that Clint Eastwood special ordered jerky to the set location while making his film Unforgiven nearby. A ringing endorsement if there ever was one. A number of the group bought a variety of jerky, including buffalo, elk, and moose.
After the jerky shopping, we headed to the Bar U Ranch, located in Longview.
Our tour guide for the Bar U Ranch was Louis, who introduced himself on our bus, with our Bus Driver Andy listening in. 
We made our way onto the Bar U Ranch following Louis, who has written a number of cowboy poetry which he shared with us. 

Bar U Ranch is a preserved ranch that for 70 years was one of the leading ranching operations in Canada.. At its peak, the ranch extended over 160,000 acres with 30,000 cattle and 1000 Percheron horses. Two owners were instrumental in the establishment of the Calgary Stampede, forming part of the Big Four.
The ranch was founded by Fred Stimson, whose North West Cattle Company kept cattle on 147,000 acres of open range between 1881 and 1902. Stimson used the Bar U brand for NWCC stock. From 1902 to 1925 the Bar U was operated by George Lane and his business partners, whose business ventures included meat packing, mills and other farms and ranches. Lane, who was originally from Iowa, renamed the operation the Bar U Ranch, buying out his partners in 1908. Lane raised both cattle and Percherons.

From 1927 to 1950 the Bar U was part of a group of ranches operated by Patrick Burns totaling 700,000 acres. Burns grew grains on the ranch, which remained one of the largest ranches in Canada during the period.

After 1950 much of the ranch land was sold. The present National Historic Site is the central remnant, owned by Parks Canada, which bought the property in 1991 and opened it to the public in 1995.

A number of prominent personalities were associated with the Bar U. In 1891 the notoriously infamous Harry Longabaugh was a horse breaker at the Bar U, later becoming the outlaw and Wild West gun fighter “the Sundance Kid”.  Edward, Prince of Wales visited the Bar U in 1919 and was so taken with it that he bought a neighboring ranch, which he named the EP. Charles M Russell painted a series of paintings at the Bar U. Ranch cowboy Everett Johnson was reportedly studied as the lead character for the novel  The Virginian and the later television show.  Lorne Greene, who was in the tv show Ponderosa, used information he learned from the Bar U, in the show – the character of Hop Sing was created on information.
This was the post office.
Louis when he isn’t being a guide makes saddles in the shop on the ranch. We walked down to the chuck house. 
A chicken coop  and Gloria checking out where the beef was hung to dry – making the first jerky.   The Chinese influence (having a Chinese cook meant you had good food) introduced the lazy Susan.   This was the root cellar.    
And no ranch would be without a blacksmith –
And here is the wagon they used which was much smaller than the Conestoga Wagons of the American West – this was due to trying to get through the trees and the terrain in Canada. 
And the draft horses they use are Percherons. 
And other cowboys – and his horse knew it was getting its photo taken.

We walked over to hear a short story about how the chuck wagon was operated and how many cowboys they served and helped with the branding of the cattle.  And our group listening  
We then walked back to the main building for our lunch.  During that time a team of Percheron horses pulling a wagon came up to the building, so I stepped out to talk with the cowboy, who told me a lot about the history of this bred of horse as it helped through history.

The Percheron is a breed of draft horse that originated in the Huisne river valley in western France, part of the former Perhe province from which the breed takes its name. Usually gray or black in color, Percherons are well muscled, and known for their intelligence and willingness to work. Although their exact origins are unknown, the ancestors of the breed were present in the valley by the 17th century. They were originally bred for use as war horses. Over time, they began to be used for pulling stagecoaches and later for agriculture and hauling heavy goods. In the late 18th and early 19th centuries,Arabian blood was added to the breed. Exports of Percherons from France to the United States and other countries rose exponentially in the late 19th century, and the first purely Percheron stud book was created in France in 1883.

Before World War I, thousands of Percherons were shipped from France to the United States, but after the war began, an embargo stopped shipping. The breed was used extensively in Europe during the war, with some horses being shipped from the US back to France to help in the war effort. Beginning in 1918, Percherons began to be bred in Great Britain, and in 1918 the British Percheron Horse Society was formed. After a series of name and studbook ownership changes, the current US Percheron registry was created in 1934. In the 1930s, Percherons accounted for 70 percent of the draft horse population in the United States, but their numbers declined substantially after World War II. However, the population began to recover and as of 2009, around 2,500 horses were registered annually in the United States alone. The breed is still used extensively for draft work, and in France they are used for food.
400 Percherons were shipped from the Bar U Ranch to France to help with restoring the bred which was decimated from World War I.

We left the Bar U Ranch and headed on our drive to Waterton Lakes.  The prairies of Alberta meet the peaks of the Rocky Mountains in Waterton Lakes National Park.  Waterton Lakes National Park is in southern Alberta, Canada, bordering Montana’s Glacier National Park. It’s known for its chain of lakes, including the large Upper and Middle Waterton lakes, flanked by the Rocky Mountains. The Red Rock Parkway crosses the prairie to the small Red Rock Canyon. Bison graze near the Bison Paddock Loop Road. In Waterton village, a pathway offers close-up views of Cameron Falls.

After visiting Prince of Wales Hotel, which was named after Prince Edward, we drove down to Waterton Lakes to our hotel.  After we circled the town, we checked in and then started a walk back to Cameron Falls, 
Our first “family photo” minus me and Carol who didn’t join us on this walk. (Don’t worry a photo was taken by a young lady on Chan’s Cell phone that I was included.)

We walked back to town checking out choices for dinner, and then we got Carol and went out for a nice dinner along the river.
And we ended our day with a new member to our bear family.  Dudley, bear and Bearbette’s cousin has joined our troop.  
Early morning tomorrow as we head to Glacier National Park and cross back over to the US before returning to Canada.