FRIDAY 29th JULY 2016 - COWBOY TRAIL

Slept in this morning but woke to see the night's thunderstorms had dried up and all was well for the day's ride ahead.   We found a place to have breakfast. It didn't look much on the outside but it was quaint and old-fashioned and served a wholesome breaky.

We rode off towards Waterton National Park.  It was a beautiful day and the scenery was pretty damn good.

We came across some bison and were quite okay being that close to them until one decided to get a bit edgy.  Boy, can they run fast when they want to. That kept us on alert from that  moment on.

We continued on our way, up hill, down dale and round corners.  It was fantastic riding.

Once out of Waterton we continued on through Pinscher and for some unknown reason we stopped at a small place called Lundbreck.  From the main road there was certainly nothing that drew our attention.  It was a tiny place, dishevelled and on a hot, dry, uninteresting section of road.  But in we went.  Imagine our surprise when we found the 'Lundbreck Liquor Store, Oldest in the West'.  What a great building.

We sat on an old railway cart and ate an apple we were carrying.  Before too long an old fella came out and invited us in to the building next door.  "Come on in", he said, "We have coffee and cake. Come and join us.  We are the senior cits".  I questioned if they let young'uns like us in but he repeated again, "Come on in".  And so we did.  It was the local Senior Citizen's group and it looks like they were having the left-overs from some kind of party.  One look at the cake and we just knew we couldn't eat that - sickly and sweet.  We accepted a drink though and joined them at the table for a chat.   Before we knew it an hour-and-a-half slipped by.  We were enjoying our chat too much, we laughed and laughed, they told many stories and we learnt quite a bit about the area.  They were a great bunch of very friendly seniors.

Time to leave and once back on the road the traffic had come to a standstill.  Vehicles were backed up for many miles.   We'd heard the sirens of police and ambulance go by earlier and had heard of an accident further up the road.  Luckily for us we could by-pass the first 75 cars, then turn north on to the Cowboy Trail (highway 22).  

We passed many ranches, all on the foothills of the larger, backdrop mountains.  We'd learnt that the oil companies have been trying to get their hands on this fertile and productive land for many years but the ranchers stick together and wont let them anywhere near this valley.  I hope they continue to win the fight.

We'd planned on staying the night at a small place called Longview.  We hoped there would be somewhere to stay and luckily for us the only motel in the town had a spare room.  In fact, it had lots of spare rooms.  Longview is not far south of Calgary and I guess most people travel the last few miles to there.  Not us, we prefer the smaller towns.  We unpacked, changed and went to check out the place.  We found fences made from wagon wheels.

The Twin Cities Hotel, built in 1938.  It's a biker destination, an easy ride from Calgary after work.

We found a place that makes old horse coaches.  We really thought they were genuine oldies but no, they were newly made!

We came across the 'world famous' Longview Jerky and decided the time had come to try a piece.  There were samples of several different kinds and we tried three pieces.  All was going well until we got to the third piece.  It was nice, but very strong.  Three small samples were enough for our palate and so we left it at that.

We stopped in at the 'Twin Cities Hotel' for a drink...

...and then went to the 'Haywire Cafe' for tea.  Guaranteed the best fish and chips in the district.  And I think they were.  We both really enjoyed our meal.  We got talking to a rancher and his wife while we were waiting for our order.  Nice people.  We ate and as they were leaving I asked a few more questions about things we'd seen along the way but hadn't understood.  They answered all our questions which was great.  We finished our meal and then we experienced the greatest surprise we've ever had.  The waitress came over and said the Rancher had paid for our meal!   WHAT.  We couldn't believe it.  We were left quite speechless and in some kind of disbelief.   We ran outside to thank them but it was too late, they'd gone.  We just could not believe that they would do that.   What an amazing thing to experience.

  

We only had to hold our full bellies a short distance as the motel was right next door.   We said goodnight to Ellie and settled in for the night.