June 23rd, Swift Current to Cranbrook, British Columbia - 439 miles

1. Pivotal Irrigator for $100,000 ............................2. Windmills Nearh Pinchner Creek



3. Ian at Frank Slide at Turtle Mountain .............4. Crossing British Columbia Border



5. Gene next to Terex Titan, Largest Truck in World

As we headed across Saskatchewan and into Alberta, you realize what a huge business agriculture is in the prairies. We stopped into the irrigation museum and they started irrigation from the Saint Mary’s River over 100 years ago. This enabled this area to survive the dust bowl effects that a lot of the mid west suffered during the depression since although water levels were low people could grow enough food for their own consumption. They grow wheat, potatoes, canola, sugar beets etc.; quite ac wide range of crops. I read they had a hostess potato chip plant there and when driving out of town there was a brand new looking McCains plant! The pivotal irrigation systems puts one inch of water over the ground every three days and the farmer does not need to tend them, but they cost $100,000. We must have seen several hundred of them in two hours driving, not to mention combines and tractors.

The land was extremely lush with low rolling hills. As we neared Crows Nest Pass there we saw over 200 windmills in the Fort MacLeod, Pinchner Creek area. It appeared this in part was due to the wind gusting through the pass at accelerated velocities. It was fantastic to see a range of mountains, with snow, a major barrier in front of us extending roughly NNW and SSE as far as the eye could see.

We stopped at the site of the Frank Slide, where in 1903, 30,000,000 cubic meters of limestone fell from the top of Turtle Mountain and wiped out Frank, a coal mining town. It all happened in 70 seconds and some of the chunks of limestone are huge!

We went through Fernie, a ski area where they receive over 800 inches of snow every winter and then through Sparwood, a major coal mining center. From there we drove down into the Valley of 1000 Peaks, a valley between the Rockies and the Purcell Mountains that runs from Golden into the United States and is the source of both the Kootenay and Columbia Rivers. We stopped at Cranbrook, a town who owes it’s existence to the CPR using it as a major staging area.