Who Smashed What?

Today was a ride and a half.  We rode from Pincher Creek to Regina and saw a lot of stuff in between.

We broke camp bright and early and headed straight for the head smashed in buffalo jump.  It was a beautiful ride through some hilly plains.  We got to the interpretive centre just as it openned and headed straight for the top.  We had a visit from a family of deer and a tour by some prairie dogs as we contemplated the ingenuity of the aboriginals.  It was a great spot and a heck of a way to hunt the wild bison.  The natives would herd the bison over a cliff and setup a butcher shop at the bottom - smart thinking.

We jumped back on the bikes and started eating up some road.  We got hungry around Lethbridge and stumbled on a family farm called Boxburn farm.  We settled in for an early lunch and chatted with our lovely waitress, Jacinta.  Boxburn is a medium sized farm that grows strawberries, raspberries, peppers, and other veggies.  They supply alot of Calgary restaurants and IGA.  Even though they produce and sell a sizeable volume there is no cutting corners on health and flavour.  They're not a strictly organic farm but everything they do on the farm leaves you feeling good about eating their veggies.

Boxburn is a recently started family farm.  This got me scratching my head abit because we're constantly hearing you can't make a living at farming and how the family farm is turning into a relic of a bye-gone era yet here is someone who has recently taken up farming and is making a go at it with some good success.

Boxburn runs a shop and a little cafe as well as the farm and our lunch at the cafe turned into a special occasion - neither of us had ever had saskatoon berry pie, today we were going to rectify that.  It was love at first bite.  Sweet and sour at the same time - lovely.

After lunch we were back on the road to Regina.  We were transitioning into the straight, fast, and windy roads of the praries.  The road was just as I expected.   Lon, linear and flanked on both sides by wheat and corn.  It's harvest time so both crops are at maturity but it's early so they haven't been cut yet.  This was an amazing site - a road that melts into the horizon surrounded by fully grown wheat and tall grass dancing in the wind.  I've never seen anything like this; the shear size of the praries is overwhelming.

We ended the day by riding into Regina by the light of a full moon that filled the night sky.  This was my prarie reality - the dream couldn't have been any better.

-- Sent from my Palm Prē