Day 78, Tuesday June 19, 2018, A straight road from Calgary to Fort McCleod, Alberta

Yes, it was a good road and a straight road. It was really fun to drive that today, after the thousands of miles of winding, and twisty roads in CA, OR, WA , BC and some Alberta, this was a treat.
From Calgary as we drove south , there is a big change in the terrain. The land only has rolling hills and soon that is left behind as the land become for all purposes, flat! This is the great hay raising area of Alberta , where the land for miles around is nothing but alfalfa fields. Some has already been cut and baled and we found a little mysterious crop that looks like lettuce forms, but was found in many  fields. I’ll research that later and get back with the findings. There was some cattle , but mostly the hay fields as we would call them.



Photos will be posted later (I hope) slow internet.


 One beautiful aspect  of this stretch of land , is that it is not only good  for growing of hay, but has many ponds along the way. We saw hundreds of them on the route. Although we could not stop on the highway, we did manage to ID some of the birds that we saw there. We had seen a few on the pond behind the trailer before we left,, but added a few on the way.  YELLOW HEADED BLACKBIRD, GREAT BLUE HERON, RED HEADED BLACKBIRD, NORTHERN SHOVELER, NORTHERN HARRIER, BARN AND TREE SWALLOW, and the MAGPIE.  In flight about halfway here,  we saw a flight of SANDHILL CRANES, that were flying overhead in the very large spirals that they use. The Magpies are a very humorous bird in their antics and movements They are disjointed sometimes and do quirky moves that surprise you.
When we made the final turn , it looks as if it was the end of the world. the concrete street  had grass growing out of it and the concrete was tilted and not level. but then we made the turn scheduled (last road) and it soon turned into a very old gravel road  with no habitation on it .Wrong road?  No, we just needed to go further. It soon became a paved road and habitation appeared and soon the Campground.  All is well, but when we turned onto the park I could only see 8 camping spots.  This is  going to be a very quiet place, I thought.  But as it turned out there was an “upper “ and “lower”-level to the park.  There are some 125 spaces. The Old Man River  (sic) runs right along the side of the park and we were to have a spot looking right out at the river, as I am doing now writing this blog. The Old Man River like many of the rivers in S.Alberta, comes right out of the Continental Divide to the west and joins up with the  South Saskatchewan River (rememeber that one) and flows into Saskatchewan Province as the Saskatchewan River.
Late in the afternoon as I was watching the river area on a picnic bench,  an AMERICAN BALD EAGLE flew by on its  way home. It didn’t stop for anything. On a gravel bar across the river there have been two KILLDEER who more than likely have a nest of eggs or young chicks to watch after.

We settled in, washed some socks, found a charge that we did not place on our credit cards. Ruth spent sone time getting that corrected with just the internet as the phone will not work until we cross the border (Verizon).  Good lesson for travelers in Canada , Check your carrier and see if it works here.
We had a 2 minute sprinkle of rain  today, and they said that that was a “calm”day with winds of 5-10 mph. Quite often they are 100 km/hr. YIKES. Tomorrow we will explore the area a bit.