Prairies (Rolling Hills)

The land was still flat as we travelled west of Moose Jaw. However, the flat landscape is occasionally interrupted by coulees. If that word is new to you, it was new to me as well. If I have ever heard the word before, it never really registered in my brain.

A coulee is a deep valley, ravine, or gully, usually one that has been carved into the landscape by water erosion. According to ChatGPT, many of these land formations in the Prairies were created by meltwater erosion during the Ice Age.

In southern Alberta and Saskatchewan, the word is especially common. Coulees often have:

• Steep, sometimes cliff-like sides
• A relatively narrow bottom
• A stream or creek at the bottom, although some are dry
• Grassland or prairie vegetation on the slopes

Just before leaving Saskatchewan we spent three nights at the Maple Creek Winery, a Harvest Hosts location near the Cypress Hills Interprovincial Park. While there, we visited the Saskatchewan portion of the park with our e-bikes. We rode around Loch Leven and stopped at a couple of lookout points in the park. From there we could see about 10,000 square kilometres of the Prairies in a single glance. That’s a lot of flat land to take in at one time.

We found an interesting stone in Medicine Hat. You will need to click on the photo and zoom in to fully appreciate its wisdom. Apparently, this stone knows more about the weather than most weather apps.

Further west, we parked our motorhome at the Walmart in Medicine Hat. We stayed three nights there as well. It was very convenient. We were able to refill our refrigerator, and we even bought a few things that we didn’t know we needed.

From this base, we drove to the Alberta side of Cypress Hills Interprovincial Park.

The photo at the top of this blog was taken from a lookout point in the park. The Sweet Grass Hills (mountains) in the distance are in Montana. Those mountains are about 115 kilometres south of the lookout point. The lookout point from which the photo was taken was 1,466 metres above sea level and roughly 600 metres above the surrounding Prairies. It is the highest point in Canada east of the Rocky Mountains and west of Labrador.

This vantage point was high enough that it was not covered by ice during the Ice Age. The brochure said that the upper part of the Cypress Hills remained above the ice, sticking up as an isolated island of land surrounded by the enormous ice sheet. Geologists call this type of ice-free high point a “nunatak.” Alberta Parks says that roughly the upper 100 metres of the Cypress Hills plateau remained above the surrounding ice. So, while most of Canada was under a gigantic sheet of ice, the Cypress Hills apparently decided to stay above the fray.

Calgary nestled in the foothills of the Rockies, was our next stop on our trek west. To be more precise, the Grey Eagle Resort and Casino provided a great place to park our motorhome as it was close to everything we wanted to see.

The weather in Calgary turned cold and wet, so we spent a day at the Core Shopping Mall in downtown Calgary. The upper floor houses the Devonian Gardens, a tropical botanical garden inside the shopping centre, with several fishponds, palms, a food court and a children’s play area. For non-shoppers, it was a lovely peaceful place to just sit. For us it was a nice place to escape the Calgary weather without having to put on our raincoats.

During our five days in Calgary Jackie met with cousins of hers that she hadn’t seen in decades. The funny thing about that was that it was only last year that her cousin Sandi with her husband Martin stayed in our condo when they visited Toronto. We didn’t actually see them as, at that time, Jackie and I were travelling with our motorhome in Quebec!

It was nice that our visit coincided with Martin’s birthday. We got to meet Sandi’s son-in-law Lance for the first time. Almost unbelievably, it turned out that Lance had worked for both of the companies where Jackie spent her entire career. It really is a small world.

We decided to buy Martin some Canadian wine for his birthday. We were surprised to find that wine in Alberta was quite a bit more expensive than in Ontario. We found that Canadian wine was particularly expensive, with most bottles starting at more than $40. We bought a couple of bottles of South African wine instead, as they were more reasonably priced. Obviously Canada still needs to work on its interprovincial trade barriers.

Jackie also visited with her cousin Linda, Sandi’s twin sister. Jackie brought her tablet with photos of when she, Sandi and Linda were young and lived near each other in Mississauga which went over really well with everybody.

Sandi and Linda’s parents lived near Jackie’s family when Jackie was a child, and the two families were very close and became Aunt, Uncle and cousins in every sense of the word. Sometimes families are created by geography, friendship and a lot of shared history rather than genetics.

Upon leaving Calgary, we travelled just a short distance to Cochrane, parked at Walmart, and called Vivian and Andrew, two friends that we hadn’t seen since they left Ontario more than 10 years ago to be closer to Vivian’s son’s family. We spent two really nice days with Vivian and Andrew, reminiscing and enjoying a guided tour of Cochrane. We even visited the art gallery in the centre of town, where Vivian volunteers as a guide and both her work and Andrew’s is displayed.

After being a soloist in the National Ballet, Andrew became a photographer. His photo of Karen Kain in Swan Lake became a commemorative Canadian stamp. While admiring the art in Andrew and Vivian’s home, Andrew graciously gave Jackie a large, beautiful photo of a dancing lily that she had admired.