From Medora Montana to  Cochrane Alberta Canada, with a stop at Buffalo Jump Cliff, that’s what we did today.  At the onset, it was slow going, because there was road construction.  Roger got to watch a big Mike Steam Shovel scoot boulders down the side of a hillside, where bulldozers could scrape them up off the road.  This stop lasted about 15 minutes.  We drove on west and then cut north past the outskirts of Glacier National Park.  In fact we drove through Thronston again and the hotel where we stayed before is still the only game in town.  Roger had strategically picked out the border crossing, since he had researched Canadian law about bringing his rifle into the country.  With paperwork in hand, out passports were taken, processed and $25 later we were on the way.  One of the questions we got asked was what states had we lived in.  When Roger told the lady Rhode Island, she said “is that a state?  Never heard of that one before.”

The stop at Buffalo Jump Cliff, was interesting and is officially designated a United Nations World Heritage Site.  Before the Indians were introduced to horses or firearms, they would work the herd with Indian skinned wolf drivers and a Indian skinned small distressed calf.  These Indians would drive the herd down a prepared “shoot” in a stampede, which would result in the bison jumping off a cliff to their peril.  The slaughter zone was readily accessible at the cliff bottom and the Indians would proceed to process the kill.  I also learned that herds of bison have a dominate female cow, who is in charge of supervising the mature male free herd.  Mature males only get involved with the herd during mating season, the rest of the time they live a solitary or small male group existence.  There’s a short trail to give visitors perspective of the cliff drop and accessibility below.  In the bottom fields there were purple lupines blooming.

After this stop we decided to push north towards Banff National Park.  We got past rush hour Calgary and are spending the night in Cochrane, which is supposed to be an hour from Banff.  Hopefully the rain showers will be finished tomorrow when were in Banff.

Our cellphones would work in Canada, if we wanted to pay through the nose on international Verizon calls.  So we won’t be calling again until we get to the southern panhandle of Alaska.