journey east: day 12

Finally, day 12. It was starting to feel a little like the movie Groundhog Day around here. Although I have a feeling this will be another multi-entry day.

June 13, 2006


Last morning in Alberta.

I started early today. It's hard to sleep in the face of the rising sun. I slept fitfully last night [probably because of cougars checking me out] and woke early. After packing things up I went for a thirty minute hike. The sign at the trail-head called it The Lake Loop. Well that was a bit of a disappointment. It looped, but it didn't loop around the lake. Rather, it looped back up into the woods. Not terribly scenic, or exciting.


The best part of Spruce Coulee.

Back on the road and beyond the gravel I passed back across a plain I had crossed the previous day. This morning it was swarming with birds out looking for breakfast. There were two types of birds, both just a few inches from beak to tail and each remarkable in its own way. One type of bird was a deep sky-blue with silver trim. Dozens of them skimmed across the field, little blue streaks flying against blue sky, then dipping through green grass.

The other type of bird was rather unremarkable to look at. However they could hover in one spot for a short period, despite a rather strong wind blowing in from the east, then swiftly glide just above ground level, wingtips brushing the grass looking for food. I didn't even try to get photos of them.

Everything a vacationer could want was available at the Elkwater Grocery and Restaurant: junk food, beer, cigarettes, postcards, romance novels, firewood, and pancakes served with maple syrup [which I spilled in my journal.] This is where I had breakfast. The woman who served me said the town's population is 67. I find that number hard to believe, but she assures me that in the off-season that number dips to around 30.

For such a small town, the restaurant was pretty big. And I was the only person there. It is not until now, as I look back on it, that it kind of creeps me out. I remember it now as the kind of place where a car drives into town and vanishes. The wind was formidable, the streets were empty, and there was no one to be seen. Had a great visitor centre though.

Soon I was back on the road, heading east through the park, for Saskatchewan.

There are two animals that haven't done so well in encounters with the car. Richardson's ground squirrels and a particularly daring kind of swallow - at least I think they're swallows.

My killing spree started yesterday with the swallow-like bird: dark grey with white feathers in the tail - usually that's the only part of them I see. It is like they are playing a game of chicken with me. Call it sparrow instead. A group of sparrows hanging out on the pavement, presumably eating dead stuff, dare each other to see who will be the last to take off. Yesterday one zigged when it should have zagged and flew straight into the front wheel of the car. Man it was fast. The sparrow was doing ok too, just took a wrong turn.

This morning it was Richardson's Ground Squirrels, which a lot of people call gophers. What I noticed while travelling these last few days is that for some reason, these furry slim rodents measuring up to 30 centimetres long seem always to want to be on the side of the road they're not already on. Come upon one at over one-hundred kilometres an hour as it is making its first tentative strides across hot asphalt and it will promptly do a 180 degree turn and do a wheelie as it accelerates back to the shadows of grass growing at the side of the road. Sometimes I come across them lazing about in the middle of the road. They aren't always successful in keeping out of danger. Today I hit two of them. Just like that the life is crushed out of them by a tonne of rubber.


not a herd of Richardson's ground squirrels.

On one occasion I came across two Richardson's in my lane. One safely skedaddled to the nearest side of the road. The other one made a lunge for the other lane, stopped, then started again before making one of those wheelie moves straight at the car. If I hadn't seen it happen I may not have noticed the slight bump. Further down the road I hit another one, connected hard with the ass of a not swift enough swallow, and then just barely missed another Richardson's that, when I last saw it in my rear-view mirror, was standing frozen and erect right on the centre line of the road.