Departed the spectacular Waterton
Lakes and we are heading off to the USA. We were on the side of the bus that
allowed us to look back at the national park.
Increasing our altitude, farmland gave way to grazing country. The area apparently attracted coal miners and
there were several mines and they did become uneconomical about 100 years ago.
A major, but little known
attraction is Frank Slide. The township
of Frank was a small coal mining community. In 1903 it was mostly destroyed
with 80+ people killed when the mountain collapsed and slid down the slope
covering half the town. One baby was
thrown out of danger and miraculously survived. This is view from the top
(Google). The interpretative centre is on
the LHS of the photo at 9 o’clock.
Miners, a month after
digging in to clear the tunnels, saw two white, shiny eyes looking at
them. At that sight the miners took off,
believing it was a ghost. Eventually they
returned to find Charlie who had survived 31 days by sucking on his harness and
eating timber. The mine owner offered
anyone $1000 to keep him alive. He was a horse. Unfortunately Charlie died the
next day.
The Blackfeet called it Turtle
Mountain and they knew not to camp near the base of the mountain. They knew
about the danger. We visited the interpretive centre and it was excellent, lots
of hand on activities for children and they even have sleepovers for them.
We had lunch at Fernie, a
jumping off point for the skiing where we enjoyed a fresh bagel. An attractive
little town that was destroyed by fire a couple of times. As a result they rebuilt
the town with wide streets and the buildings had to be of stone or brick
construction.
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Our border crossing was at Roosville, Montana. A quiet backroad. They do the whole biometric
scan, electronic fingerprints and retinal scans - RETINAL SCAN – just so there
is no confusion. It all went smoothly for us. Our tour guide said it was a
record to get through in 35 minutes for the group but many of our tour group had
entered the US in the last two years so that sped up the process.
We arrived in
Whitefish, where we were going to stay the night during their Memorial Day
(like our ANZAC Day). A neat little town anywhere USA.
This was from a previous parade.
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