Passed through Calgary this morning and got rather lost — having more than one road to follow is something I’ll have to get used to again. After Calgary the land turned to prairie, with golden hills rolling to the horizons, blue sky above that defined “big sky”, and the snow-capped Rockies just to the west. It’s been a dream of mine for many years to one day buy a ranch and settle down on it, and in those dreams the country has always looked exactly like what I was seeing today.
Made a brief stop in Waterton National Park and had several bison cross the road around my car — it’s normally not smart to get too close to one of these beasts, but I was in a protected area that had been fenced off so I figured these guys were used to cars, and as a result had an eye-to-eye view with three bulls (I was in the car — I’m stupid but not crazy).
While it’s sad to be leaving the wilds behind, there have been a couple of benefits to returning to civilization. In Browning, Montana I stopped at Subway for dinner, and ate a sandwich that consisted of stringy chicken, stale bread, and old lettuce, and still tasted ten times better than canned soup. Another benefit of returning south is that I’ve had at least one radio station for most of the day. Radio highlights included an introduction on CBC (“Let me bring out a man who plays the bagpipes professionally, which means he’s far from rich and his neighbors want him dead”) and a Budweiser salute to Starbucks (“Sure you charge five dollars for a cup of coffee, but what takes real guts is putting out that tip jar”).