July 8th, 2013 - Cardston, Lethbridge, Fort Macleod

Monday, July 8th we went to Lethbridge, Cardston and Fort Macleod.

We found this old park or fort, that had all kinds of old equipment.  Darrell was in heaven looking at all the old farm equipment.  There was even an old, large working saw mill.  No fences, no one around, so we walked all over the place.  Climbed up on stuff and had fun looking at old equipment.



Then we went to a place called Smashed Head Buffalo Jump.  Pretty cool place to learn about Indian history and culture in the area.  The Indian tribe there did not have horses, so they devised a way to corner the buffalo and get them to run to the cliff and jump off the cliff.  The Indians were waiting at the bottom of the cliff and harvested the buffalo.  One indian child was too close to the buffalo landing spot and got smashed, hence the name, Smashed Head.  They built a museum telling the history of the area, pictures of what the area looked like and how they used the buffalo and most of it's parts to sustain themselves.

 

Fort Maclead is an old Royal Canadian Mounted Police fort.  The fort was moved from it's original location along the river because of constant flooding, so they moved it in to town.  The fort and all it's antiques and memorabilia was fun to look at. They adversized that was the training ground for the RCMP and their horse patrol.

We went in to watch the RCMP riders do some exercises and patterns.  Pretty disappointing.  Their uniforms were dirty, ill fitting, leather was junky and they could not ride a horse.  Someone has turned this in to a tourist trap and the horse riding demonstration was a joke.  Looked like a bunch of high school kids that did not have much riding experience.  At times while riding in their formations, the horses were barely moving.  One girl fell off her horse twice.  Kind of embarrassing.

 

We stayed July 8th in Lethbridge, Alberta.