The Journey continues....

After our entertaining experience with the Starbucks, we quickly fled Bonner’s ferry but only got as far at the edge of town. From the side of the road, you could see a broad sweeping view of the valley, with stunning yellow fields, bright green pastures and velvety lazy rivers and ponds. I quickly jumped out of the car to take this panoramic scene only to find a huge field blocking the view. I angled my camera to get some of the pictures but it was not as nice as what we really saw. We kept on driving and thanks to “Nancy the GPS” wandered to the border crossing. It was under construction and had one booth open. The guard was very nice and wished us to have fun time and that was one of the many firsts of the “Canadian Kindness” that we encountered.

Photos from the Kootenal Wildlife Refuge.

 I loved the yellow and green contrast.

 More contrast. We didn't know what the crops were but if you do, let me know.

We came across this doe and her twins. One of the twins just had a jolly time running up and down. It was in the shadows so I couldn't get the best photos but the entertainment was sheer delight. The fawn ran up and down the strip for about five minutes.

 Mama is concerned about us but the fawn was having so much fun.

 She finally gave up and gave herself a good ole scratch and watched her fawn run some more.

Mama and the others twin who did not run about.

 Look at the tail on the fawn.

 OK, the fun is over and time to head out.

 Wind whipped marshes.

 Mama Goose hurried her brood away from us.

 This dead tree begged to have it's picture taken.

An Island of trees in the middle of the cropland.

We hit Hiway 3 and had rolling hills that were dotted with cattle ranches. We saw some very nice cattle and took some pictures. One cow in particular was very serious about letting us know we should stay on that side of the fence while her calf took great delight in trying to approach us. We did stay on our side of the fence, in case you were wondering. The cattle were square and looked bigger than the cattle in my area. We saw herds of horses, bright bays, glossy sorrels, flashy paints and sun burst palominos. We did see the occasional sheep flock but nary a Border Collie. Lunch time found us in the town of Nanton were we spied a restaurant called “Kens” and we expected it to be a local home-style food but to our surprise it was a Chinese restaurant. Maybe they meant to call it "Chens”.   Anyways we did order a non-Chinese lunch on it and it was quite good and soon we were on our way.

We arrived in Calgary in late afternoon, went to the admin office and got our packages. We also did a dry run over to the fairgrounds so we would know we would have to put our dogs at early the next morning, figure out the shuttle system and figure out were the handler’s meeting and event would be. Since Janet was 6.5 months pregnant, we didn’t want to be doing any extra running around in the early morning.

Our hotel was the Raddison and it was a very nice hotel. It was next to the Liquor store and we forgot to stop and get my bottle of Crown Royal Reserve. How awful is that?

Tomorrow: The Calgary Stampede