22 August 2016, Monday
It’s a cool morning with just a slight cloudy haze over the blue sky. After breakfast we head for 70 Mile Butte to hike there before the day becomes too hot. As we drive up the access road I notice cell reception is pretty good, and there is a text from S asking if we are “beyond the Verizon.” I reply that we are temporarily back in range and S suggests it is a good time to chat. By now we are part way up the trail. O and I find a small patch of shade trailside, and we sit down to call and catch up. As we chat we notice a strange dark haze rolling across the prairie from the west. We soon figure out (aided by the slightly acrid smell) that it is smoke, not fog. S searches his computer as we chat for news of fires in Saskatchewan or Alberta. Nothing. O and I conclude our conversation with S and K and continue up the trail. We hope to reach the top of 70 Mile Butte before the surrounding countryside completely disappears in the haze.
70 Mile Butte is so named because it was that distance both to the east and to the west from Royal Canadian Mountain Police stockades built in the late 1800’s. Because it is such a prominent feature of the landscape it was used by travellers as a major navigational landmark.
Early in our hike we pass a mule deer and two fawns. They seem quite unconcerned by our passing and quickly return to grazing. In fact, we have to make all sorts of whistling noises to get the fawns to look up for a photo. We continue to follow the trail as the prairie becomes ever more hazy. On the other hand the cloud of smoke does an excellent job of protecting us from the sun. We reach the windy top of the butte and do our best to take photos while keeping our hats from blowing away across the plains. On the trek back down we pause to photograph some wildflowers.
We return to the visitor center to ask about the smoke. Apparently the source is a fire in Oregon. We meet Bonnie once again. She has remembered that our other question when we hiked with her was about the meridians. The meridians are carefully surveyed lines starting with the first meridian in Manitoba near the geographic center of the country. A second park interpreter working at the desk is from western Alberta. She says locals there usually will say they come from “west of the 5th.”
We now take the road back to camp, making way for a double-wide truck with rolled bales of hay, and again for a huge machine that is wider than the road. No doubt who has the right of way there! We are planning an early dinner and then a return to the stops on the ecotour we have not yet explored.
While I seek a sheltered place to work on my journal, O gets the Coleman stove out for dinner. It is so windy that the stove blows off the table. By the time I come back from my sheltered picnic table, O has everything weighted down with rocks. Our dinner is successfully cooked.
We return to Jazz and drive out on the ecotour as shadows lengthen. We revisit the prairie dogs, bison and owls. We inspect native prairie grasses. We see a glacial erratic (a large piece of pink granite) that has been used as a back and chin scratching post by bison for thousands of years. We find another teepee ring, and we finally make it down to one of the many meanders of Frenchman’s River. The smoky haze from the Oregon fire makes for a brilliant red sunset. We return to our tent and listen as the tent fly crackles in the wind while crickets chirp nearby.
