Alberta, Alberta...

Isn't that an Eric Clapton song?

It's been a great time exploring a bit more of Alberta Province. 

After Waterton, I did take a quick jog over the border into British Colombia to check out the town of Fernie, which an eavesdropping woman at a yoga studio recommended to me just before I left Denver. It is, as promised, a super-sporty, super-cute, mellow town that was probably worth much more than the half-day I got to spend there. My favorite part was seeing people float down the very cold Elk River on inner tubes on a warm, sunny Friday afternoon. It was bliss just watching them; must've been heaven on the water!

But then back to Alberta, where I loved my visit to Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump, a UNESCO World Heritage site where (for no less than 6,000 years) the native people of the Great Plains used incredible skill and cunning to kill potentially hundreds of buffalo at a time by driving them over the lip of a cliff. It was confirmed for me that this is one of the windiest places in Canada--though I actually learned as much by experience early that morning when my tent was nearly blown away with me in it starting at 6 a.m. and continuing until I gave up trying to sleep. But I digress. Even my stingy, museum-wary self loved the visitor's center at this impressive place. And of course the view of the jump itself and the prairie spreading out toward the east was breathtaking. (Or was that the wind, too?)

Then, I was the grateful recipient of some major travel juju when I consulted my ever-growing list of hometowns and e-mail addresses for people I've met while traveling, sent an out-of-the-blue e-mail to M from Calgary (whom I'd met seven years earlier in Zambia), and got back not just a reply but a terrific visit that extended into several days and included much time spent at the Calgary Folk Music Festival listening to so much new (to me) and great music that my head is spinning...

...a local's tour of the city itself (which necessarily includes the oil-funded sports cars that rev their engines at its stoplights by night, and much evidence of the terrible flooding that occurred here earlier in the summer, though somehow it manages to be a totally lovely place regardless)...

...and what was, I think, my first experience of Ukranian food. Borscht, pierogi, cabbage rolls, all right!

I also got to try the oh-so-Canadian delicacy (?) moose sausage, so my time in Calgary has been a serious booster to my cultural education. In some ways it's a very Denver-like city, and so it seems appropriate that the traveling party continues on into the mountains to check out Canada's answer to Vail, which is (I hear; don't Snopes me on this) one of the top tourist destinations in the country. Can you guess? Either way, stay tuned...