The Roe River

We had a short drive from Milk River, AB to Belt, MT and made a pit-stop in Great Falls, a half an hour away from our destination. Our plan had been to get some lunch and let our homestay know that we would be there soon, BUT, we couldn't reach our homestay so we had to kill some time and I knew just the thing.

Getting Mandy to do this thing took some convincing, but hey, I'm persistent and it's better than doing nothing. We drove to the world's shortest river. That's right! According to the Guinness World Records, the shortest river in the world is in Great Falls, MT. Now, this has been debated, is held in contention and the Guinness World Records hasn't listed a shortest river since 2006, but semantics!

The Roe River in Giant Springs State Park is just 201 feet long. You'd have to walk it 26.268 times to walk just one mile!

Me and the ENTIRE Roe River

The Roe River flows into the Missouri River which is the largest river in North America, so it's pretty cool to see. We walked along the Missouri River for a bit until our homestay called us and it was time to get to Belt, which is where we are now!

Hoodoo You Think You Are?

We decided that we should spend our final day in Milk River adventuring so this afternoon, we drove back out to Writing-on-Stone Provincial Park for a hike.

Who wouldn't want to go here?

Even though we had climbed all over the hoodoos on Tuesday, we hadn't gotten to hike any of the trails or see any of the petroglyphs, so this was perfect. When we drove back in, I was overwhelmed again by just how incredible this place is. This isn't the type of place people dream about visiting, but it should be.

It's just glorious.

The hike on the Hoodoo Trail to "The Battle Scene" was 2.7 km according the sign and for once, we actually started walking in the correct direction! I don't think that has ever happened to us. Along our walk, we heard someone singing Christina Perri's Jar of Hearts, which inspired the name of this post "Hoodoo you think you are." Clever word play! 10 points to the random stranger walking the opposite direction of us!

Hoodoos are also known as fairy chimneys and I am moving into one. A) Because I love them and B) because that is the coolest name ever and it's an awesome mental picture. 

Circle of life

This hike was not a straight forward one -- walking across windswept rocks rarely is (or is it? I don't know, but this serious climb). Along the hike, we saw lots of cool things (including deer that jumped out and surprised us on our walk back), but we also saw this something that appears to be a jaw, which I thought was neat and Mandy thought was gross. 

We took a small detour on our way to "The Battle Scene" to go to a viewpoint. The viewpoint was beautiful but after the long, windy trek to the top, we realized that we could have driven up there. Not the point, because I like walking, but that's just the way these things always work out.

After that, we walked out to the Battle Scene, which is where the petroglyphs are. Now, my photo of the petroglyphs didn't really work out because they're pretty faint, but I did take a picture of the sign!

After we were done with our hike, it was back to Milk River for some homemade noodles for dinner! Noodles! That were made at home! So good. Excited to be back in the States tomorrow

With great power comes great responsibility. I won't say that a selfie stick is great power, but I will say that we definitely aren't responsible enough to have one.

Canadian Vanilla, Eh

We found Canadian ice cream!!! It was literally called Canadian vanilla, eh and you cut open the box to reveal the maple leaf. It was good.

Writing-on-Stone

Milk River is 42 kilometers away from Writing-on-Stone Provincial Park (it's a Provincial Park because up here in Canada, they have provinces instead of states!) so last night, our homestay drove us out there to do some exploring.

I do mean, last night, by the way. We didn't leave until like 5:30, because it feels like the sun never sets here (ok, it does -- somewhere between 8:30 and 9).

It's called Writing-On-Stone because it contains the largest concentration of First Nation (Native Canadian) petroglyphs and pictographs on the great plains of North America, but we didn't get to see those. They're on the other side of the park. For us, Writing-on-Stone was more like Walking-on-Stone, because we climbed all over these monster rocks.

But first, let me take a selfie (stick).

The stones here are hoodoos like what we saw in Banff and Medicine Rock but there are a lot of them, very close together. They make the hoodoos in Banff look like absolutely nothing (not that that's very hard since the hoodoos in Banff weren't very impressive anyways, it was the hiking that was great). As part of our adventure, our homestay not only gave us a lift to the park, she also let us borrow her selfie stick, which we had a lot of fun with (it would actually be great for us since we go so many places but never have anyone to take pictures of us, even though it seems a bit pretentious).

We climbed from the parking lot at the bottom up to the (closed) visitor center at the top so get a view of the whole place. After that, our homestay left us to explore and went back down to the car. Explore we did. We climbed all over these things. The only writing we actually saw was some unfortunate graffiti (which, if reported, can cost a vandal $50,000 and a year in jail!) but we did get to learn about the First Nation culture when we were at the visitor center. Like I said before, Writing-on-Stone has the largest collection of First Nation petroglyphs and pictographs and is actually also called Áísínai'pi National Historic Site so getting to know the culture was cool as well.

We spent a long time climbing and getting lost (something we are very good at) until we made out way back down to the parking lot. Where we discovered that our homestay was not waiting for us like she said she would be; her car was there, but she was not. As Mandy freaked out (for the sake of the camera) about our dilemma, I read more about the First Nation and about how their creation story involves a muskrat creating the world.

I wouldn't mind going back for another hike if time allows it but if not, this was definitely another successful adventure!

Dinosaur Update

The T-Rex statue in Milk River is named Tyrone and is a 3/4 scale replica of a T-Rex.

The more you know!

Milk River, AB

Back in Canada, eh? Yes, indeed, we are. We've only got to cross the borders a few more times now (back to the States, back to Canada and then one more time).

I don't even like coffee.

Yesterday was drive day, which wasn't very exciting except that we drove through Circle, MT. Ok, Circle, MT wasn't particularly exciting either but it is notable because the closest Starbucks is 192 miles away and that makes it the furthest you can be from a Starbucks in the continental United States and that's pretty cool in it's own strange way.

This week, we are in Milk River, AB, a place we have driven past many times by now and have been waiting for for a very long time. We have been waiting for Milk River because *drum roll* they have a dinosaur statue. A giant dinosaur statue that you can see from the highway. And you know how we feel about giant roadside attractions. Avid blog readers might remember that Mandy wanted to stop here the first time we drove past it and that I nixed that idea since we would be here for a whole week. 

We walked through town today to see the sites and finally meet the dinosaur statue up close and personal. While walking through town, we stopped at town hall to look for postcards (which we found -- they have the dinosaur statue on them) and they gave us town pins! We got pins in Kyle, SK and Milk River's pins are adorable as well. It didn't come with any explanation, which would have been nice. I want to know what "Under 8 Flags" means. I also want to know why they wouldn't check the grammar before making these pins, but oh well.

Fingers crossed that the awesome weather keeps up -- it's supposed to be 20 degrees tomorrow (degrees Celsius that is, I need to turn my Canada brain back on!).