|
July 15 Friday Bicycle touring from Bassano Alberta - Dinosaur Park Alberta I treated myself to another long hot shower this morning. We pack up and head off in the direction of Dinosaur Provincial Park. We stop at a paint shop on the way out of town and buy a new plastic drop cloth to put over our bikes when it rains. Our old sheet has a major hole where Susan's bike toppled over and put a gash in it. We pass a truck sign warning of a steep downhill ... but there is no steep hill anywhere in sight. At best it is a minor dip in the road. It is pretty flat around this part of the prairies. The road has a ripple in it now and then. There are not even very many corners. I can see straight ahead until a small rise blocks my view and when I crest that I can see all the way to the horizon again. We go into the village of Rosemary. I learn that the big blue and white boxes in the fields that look like golfing tee off boxes are actually for bees to pollinate the clover. The bees are kept in cold storage over the winter months and in the spring they are set back in the fields to go bout their business. I ask Craig, the owner of Harry's General store, about the steep hill sign back on the highway. He figures some road worker spilled his coffee one morning going down the dip. "Jeez, we better put a sign up." The day is hot and the store has a sale on popsicles. We eat as many as we can. When we finish off his stock we move onto fudgesicles, accompanied by a Grand Slam Pepsi. We ask Craig where he hides his washrooms. He replies "At the Bakery ... two doors down." Holy Cow! A bakery in town and we didn't even know it. We had been upwind all this time. We quickly excuse ourselves and go to buy a doughnut or two for lunch. Lynn, the server, tells us that Rosemary got its name from the Queen's cousin. There are other towns in the area who are also named after the Queen's cousins and royal names such as Patricia, Duchess, Countess. An old farmer pulls into the pumps outside Harry's General Store with a well-used Subaru. He goes to put gas in and as he pulls the trigger on the pump, gas splooshes onto the dusty ground. He crouches and looks under the Subaru before quizzically mumbling "I'll be ... There's no tank." He removes the gas nozzle from the gas tank neck, which should have lead to the tank but all he can see is daylight. "Yep," he drawls, "that confirms it. No tank." He tells Craig he just bought the thing yesterday. "I guess you got a good deal on it then," Craig deadpans. "What does it run on?" he asks. "Air?" The old guy searches around and finds another gas cap on the other side of the car. He opens it and reports to us bystanders that this time he can't see straight through. A good sign. We help push the vehicle backwards and Craig sprays away the spilled gas. "Just in case someone comes by with a cigarette," he says. "Wouldn't want Old Farley to quit smoking that way." Yep, that would be a heck of a way to quit. The people around Rosemary have tabs set up at the store. They just walk in, grab a set of gloves, groceries, or whatever, and Craig adds it to their tab. "How do I get one of those?" I ask him. "Just ask for one," he replies. "It's been a habit for over fifty years, when my dad Harry owned the store, and it's kind of hard to break the tradition. People seem to like it a lot." Typical small town hospitable atmosphere. It's good to know there are still places around in our fast society of dog-eat-dog that there are still friendly and trusting folks of their fellow man. While I'm still marvelling, Sharon asks Craig if there is somewhere she can fill her water bottle. He takes it and troops off to the back to fill it up, leaving his till wide open with the money just sitting there. As we are siting on the bench in front of his store he leaves out the front door. "I'm off to the post office. Answer the phone for me if it rings, will ya?" "Sure," we three reply in chorus. We sit outside the store enjoying the sun a long while. We check with Craig to see if it is possible to buy more supplies farther along the route. "Sure," he says "at Duchess or the corner in the park." We don't want to carry heavy stuff any farther than we absolutely have to. We ride off on our bikes and stop in Duchess to buy enough groceries to see us through the next couple of days in the Badlands, stocking up on eggs, ham, pineapple, vegetables for a salad, salad dressing, and a loaf of wholesome bread. Before continuing, we eat doughnuts and drink cold milk at a cement picnic table commemorating Canada's Centennial in 1967. I walk next door to the meat shop to see if we can get some sliced turkey. No poultry there. We are in beef country. They are wrapping hamburger and trimming giant slabs of steaks off a hanging carcass. It is quite the operation they have going there. Half a dozen workers sitting around the counter with raw meat up to their elbows. Can't get much fresher than that. We jump on our bikes and churn along the dusty trail. The prairies around here are as flat as a pancake. We roll along viewing fields of vibrant blue flax. It looks outstanding beside an adjacent field of sunshine yellow rapeseed. The two crops are divided only by a strip of asphalt running through their midst. Wild white and yellow clover dot the roadside ditches. Cattails populate numerous marshes. And, unlike the more northern parts of the province, we begin seeing irrigation. The sprinklers get water from a canal system with a series of gates that look like mini-locks. We stop at Dinosaur Corner Store where there is also a row of post office boxes. They have a good stock of food. We don't need to buy anything, but we avail ourselves to the restrooms. They are well equipped ... they even have showers. A black and white cat sleeps on a deck in the shade next to a row of picnic tables emblazoned with the brands of rancher's from these parts. As we ride our heavily loaded bikes north to Dinosaur Park, we find the wind is --how should I put it? -- less in our favour. Thankfully, we have only sixteen kilometres to go. The prairie continues flat and golden. Two valleys stretching off to the sides hint of Badlands as we approach the park. We cross a pair of cattle guards and are suddenly staring out at an enormous sunken area filled with Badlands formations. It appears to be right out a wild west backdrop. The pavement ends. I'm guessing that most people's initial reaction when viewing the mind-boggling enormity of the landscape must be filled with superlatives such as "Fantastic! Beautiful! Amazing!" Mine was a more lowly "Shit! What happened to our pavement?" In tranquility, sitting in earnest silence, contemplating the spiritual sense of the place, we gaze at the surrounding badlands. I take a photo, locking this phase of Badlands history into never-more erosion. Then, procrastination coming to an end, we hop on our bikes and jolt down the steep gravel incline. "How are we ever going to get back up this hill?" I wonder. Bumping along the rutted surface, squeezing my brake levers to ensure I don't build up too much bone-shaking speed -- wouldn't want to pass all those breathtaking hoodoos that took 13000 years to make too quickly -- or launch myself into the valley over the edge of the road with no guardrails. We pull into the Dinosaur Park field station. It is a regular miniature Tyrrell museum ... fortunately this one only takes fifteen minutes to tour through. We find a camp spot. It has no shade and is not even big enough to pitch our two tiny tents. The girls look around for another site while I go back to the office to exchange sites. In a short time, we are set up by the muddy and meandering little Sandpiper Creek. Mosquitoes buzz in our ears; sandflies, thick noxious clouds of the little buggers, accompany them. I am beginning to think the copious amounts of DEET I have smeared on my body is like candy to them. "I'm a DEET man," I rasp in an off-key voice. At seven o'clock it is still too hot to eat anything more substantial that a small salad. We head for the outdoor theatre. A trio of park rangers proceed to put on a skit titled "Beauty and the Badlands." Ranger Carter really gets into his role of 'Ouch' the cactus. The thing concludes when 'Grot,' the evil witch, finally gets turned into a hoodoo and the spell is broken. |
