Reynolds - Alberta Museum

Model T Snow Vehicle

We continued on to Edmonton, Alberta today with our one stop at the Reynolds-Alberta Museum, a museum about transportation. Most of the museum is dedicated to the automobile. They had numerous classical cars from the early 1900’s – electric, steam, and gasoline powered. The exhibit continued on with cars from the 20’s through the 50’s. There was also a large exhibit about the transition from horse drawn farm implements to tractors and the significant productivity improvement that resulted, especially when you considered how many farm resources went to feed the horses. A similar point was made about trucks versus horse-drawn vehicles. Within a city environment they could deliver about 4 times as much product in a day. The unique parts of the museum were some of the early motorcycles, and snow vehicles. Particularly interesting was a kit to turn your Model T into a snow vehicle by adding skis in place of the front wheels and a track mechanism to the rear wheels. In another building was a small collection of planes from an early 1908 canvas and wood up through most of the propeller models through the 1940's. For some reason, there was also a recent unmanned propeller driven plane of modern day. The vehicle collection was much more impressive than the plane collection.

Early Steam Tractor

Heritage Park

We spent the entire day at Heritage Park in Calgary. Many historic buildings from Alberta have been reassembled here (or in some cases reproduced) to present the history of the province. There are different sections of the park for the various times in history: the time of fur trappers and military outposts, the coming of the railroad, the farming community, and the largest exhibit was the boom times of 1900-1914 displaying many different buildings of the period. The place was swarming with families and children. They kept them happy with a train ride, boat ride, wagon ride, and an amusement park with rides primarily from the 1920-30’s.


Our favorite part of the day was talking with the fur trader, who showed us how to set a muskrat trap and invited us back to set the bear trap that night. We managed to easily spend six hours here: touring the various buildings, taking the train and boat ride, talking to the people explaining many of the exhibits. At the end we briefly visited the Gasoline Alley Museum with many antique vehicles, early gasoline stations, and a large collection of gas pumps. 

Heritage Square

Lethbridge to Calgary

Nikka Yuko Japanese Gardens

We started our morning by visiting the Nikka Yuko Japanese Gardens, a tranquil spot in a mostly industrial town. The gardens were small, but beautiful. A lot of effort had been made to build a tranquil setting with ornately pruned trees, carefully placed rocks, and gurgling water features. The pavilion house was set up to be a Japanese Tea room and an exhibit of water painting depicted a pilgrimage to Japan. Our favorite part of the visit though was wandering the pools with their reflections of rocks, waterfalls, and trees. We also just spent time in the gazebo listening to the reverberation of the water against the rocks, a nice respite from the highways.

We continued on to Calgary and tried out the Calaway RV Park. The park is right next to an amusement park of the same name, we didn’t go, but lots of the families did. I can’t recommend this RV Park, because it is poorly designed, most of the utilities are shared between two campsites, and the posts for electricity and water may be too far for your connectors (they do offer extension cords for rent). The sewage connection did not have enough maneuvering room for the connectors.

Old and New Buildings in Calgary

In the evening, we did a rare thing, we visited the center of the city. The famous landmark of the city is the Calgary Tower, but at $18.00/person, it didn’t seem worth going up to see the view. We did, however, walk the pedestrian street, Stevens street nearby. It actually was quite interesting because of the mix of new and old architecture – sandstone classical buildings mixed with the steel and glass of new buildings. The stores stayed open till 5 and then it became a restaurant and bar scene. We had a Guinness and Harp at the Irish Bar along with some Irish Meat Pies, great setting and good food. The prettiest part of Stevens street was near the municipal building, Olympic park. A huge pool of water with fountains and flowers as well as the award platform for the 1988 Olympics. The awards continue, since all the Olympic medal winners are commemorated here on bronze plaques.

Olympic Plaza

Lewis and Clark Interpretive Center

We headed west to Great Falls, Montana to visit the Lewis& Clark Interpretive Center.  We had last visited this museum eight years ago, but I’ll admit I didn’t remember much about it. My intention had been to visit the C. M. Russel museum, but it is closed on Mondays. The museum tells the story of the Lewis an Clark Expedition, beginning with finding equipment and supplies in Philadelphia until they reach the coast of Oregon. It particularly focuses on two areas: the tribes encountered along the way and the 18 mile portage around the five falls in this area. A couple interesting facts about the Indians. First, they spent a winter with the Mandan Indians in South Dakota; here they met a French Fur Trader and his Indian wife, Sacagawea. While she did not guide the party anywhere, she proved instrumental when they needed to trade their canoes for horses in order to cross the Bitterroot Mountains in Idaho. She had been taken by the Mandans from her people as a young girl, and as luck would have it, she recognized her brother as they headed west and he was chief of the tribe. The expedition also had very few problems with any Indian tribes, since she was along, the Indians felt this wasn’t a war party. The other interesting fact about the Indians is that Lewis & Clark, noted the words in each Indian tongue for common objects. Jefferson felt that there would be commonalities among the languages for Indians that had frequent contact. As they crossed the Bitterroot Mountains, the words of the languages changed, indicating a different family of languages and Indians.

Portage around Great Falls

The Great Falls proved to be the toughest obstacle on the entire journey. It took them 2 weeks to portage the 18 miles around these five falls, pulling their dugout canoes on a home-made wooden cart up and down the hills. They lost some of the canoes and had to spend another 2 weeks remaking 2 canoes before they could continue their journey.

Eagle Falls today (one of 5 falls)

After our stop we continued up to Lethbridge, Alberta, Canada to stay at the Bridgeview RV Park, a compact park with lots of trees. The place was filled with RVs from Alberta. As we crossed Alberta, the land changed from ranch land to agricultural land. Everywhere the fields are bright yellow with Canola, but we also see wheat, corn, and flax (in a beautiful blue/purple tint).

Little Bighorn

We camped in Douglas Wyoming last night at Deer Park RV, an older campground with lots of shade and an ice cream social every night ($1.50 for two scoops, bring your own bowl). We headed West on I-90 to Little Bighorn Battlefield, renamed from Custer Battlefield in 1991. Based on our experience in Gettysburg we decided to take the bus tour of the battlefield to get a better feel for the battle. Our guide was a Crow Indian, who at the time were scouts for Custer’s forces.

Site of Custer's Last Stand

 In 1868, a treaty had been signed with the Indians designating most of Eastern Wyoming as a permanent Indian reservation. But in 1874, gold was discovered in the Black Hills and the negotiations to buy the Black Hills from Sitting Bull (the Lakota leader) failed. Sitting Bull and his tribe left the reservation after the influx of the gold seekers. They encroached on Crow land, which is why the Crows helped Custer against Sitting Bull. Here at Little Bighorn, the Indians formed an encampment of 5000-7000 Indians (about a quarter of them warriors). Because of the lay of the land, only the southern tip of this encampment was visible to Custer and his scouts, so he didn’t realize his 600 men were outnumbered. He divided his forces and attacked the Indian encampment. The rest, as they say, is history. About 210 men under Custer’s command were killed during a fairly short battle. Reno’s men who had been split off, lost 53 men, and then retreated. If Custer had waited a day, he would have been reinforced by General Terry coming from the North and perhaps the battle might have a different ending. Unfortunately, for the Indians this was the beginning of the end. The federal government sent more troops to control the Indians and this was the last battle won by the Indians. Eventually, they returned to much smaller reservations in the Dakota’s, Wyoming, and Montana.

Indian Memorial added in 2003

We continued on to Lewiston, MT through country that alternated between beautiful and barren. Lewiston itself is near an area with trees and rolling hills. We finally have gotten north of the haze coming from numerous fires in Idaho and Oregon.

I-25 through Wyoming

If you would rather view a narrated video, rather than read about this trip, it is available on youtube. 

We spend most of the day heading north on I-25 through Wyoming. Our only stop of the day was at the National Historic Trails Interpretive Center in Casper, WY. We both felt that we had been here before, because the building looked so familiar. Run by the BLM, I suspect that it is a similar museum to another we’ve visited. As we arrived they were having a special talk on firearms used by the settlers and Indians of the area. We learned a few new things. While the settlers gave the Indians rifles, the Indians were dependent upon white men for both gun powder and bullets for many years. These became profitable trade items. The first Colt pistol had 5 shots in the revolver. But these had to be individually loaded with shot and tamped with gun powder. Each shot also had to be surrounded with grease or firing one of them would light the entire set, usually resulting in severe injury to the shooter.

The Oregon Trail

The museum itself covers the story of the key trails that came through Casper: the Oregon, California, and Mormon trail as well as the pony express route. All these trails crossed the continental divide at South Pass (southwest of here). All these trails follow the Platt River for over 500 miles and here they cross the Platt for the last time. This was often a dangerous crossing, the river can be 10 feet deep here, and often wagon trains would get delayed here waiting for the water to recede. In the 1850’s a ferry was created and later a toll bridge. The trains then followed the Sweetwater passing Independence rock (the goal was to reach here before July 4^th to beat the winter snows).  This all ended in the late 1860’s when the first transcontinental railroad was completed.

Postojna, Slovenia

Church of the Mother of God on Lake Bled

In the morning I walked around the lake with Sharon. The clouds were thick when we started and it felt like we were walking in a rain forest with a light mist coming down. But it was a refreshing 1 1/2 hour walk. The walk gives some unique perspectives on the island and we walked right underneath what was one of Tito's palaces now an hotel. Our hotel was the Hotel Lovec a little above the lake. We had a nice suite and a number of others have a balcony looking over the lake. The hotel's restaurant is also supposed to be good, but we didn't try it.

Prejama Castle

Then we headed off to Postojna in the Karst (or limestone) region of Slovenia. This area is know for it's disappearing lake. The lake is larger than Bohinj lake in the springtime, but it disappears by this time of year. The phenomenon was originally thought to be witchcraft, but we now know that there is a huge underground lake in the limestone, but when there is too much water it overflows above ground. We first visited Prejama Castle, a unique castle since it is built into a cave. The original castle was built in the 12th century, but it became famous in the 15th century as the hiding place for Slovenia's version of Robin Hood, known as Erasmus. He would rob from the Hapsburg nobility and give to the poor. The Hapburgs eventually sent an army up to capture him from Trieste. They surrounded the castle for over a year, but they were unable to catch Erasmus. He used one of the natural caverns of the cave to leave each night and return with fresh supplies. They bribed one of his servants to light a candle when he was using the toilet in the most exposed part of the castle and fired a catapult to knock out the toilet with him inside of it.

The original castle now has a newer castle in front of it built as a hunter's lodge. Being in a cave, the castle is always cool and quite damp, unsuitable for living in permanently. Inside they had carved channels in the cave rock to channel the water into a cistern. At the top of the cavern a system of metals pipes was used to collect the dripping water and channel it to a well up above. Quite ingenious!

After a quick lunch we went to Postojna cave - boy was it crowded! We were supposed to follow the tour guide in English, but because of the large crowd and the difficulty of the sloping paths (we went up and down several times through the two major levels of the cave) we soon lost the guide. We did have our audio headsets, however, so we could hear about the highlights of the cave through that. The tour started with a ride behind on rails to get to the interior of the cave. This had to be the insight for the start of Walt Disney's Thunder Mountain Roller Coaster. While we didn't go up and down, we did have several sharp curves as we passed by stalactites and stalagmites. The cave is best know for several formations: a lot of spaghetti (very thin) stalactities hanging from the ceiling, the many colorful curtain style formations and at the end a red column followed by what looked like a white ice cream cone. It was another interesting day.

Our farewell dinner was in the village of Radovljica. We had several surprises during the evening. We had a visit to St. Peter's church in the village, a 15th Century church with it's interior restored to that age. The priest had married Petra and her husband and came back from visiting with first communion families to show us his church. We had been traveling with Irwin Reese, who just retired from the Metropolitan Opera Company. People had been begging him to sing, so he used the acoustics of this church for his performance. Next,  we had the opportunity to see Ginger Bread ornaments being made from honey dough before settling down to our excellent Slovenia dinner at Gostilna Lectar.



So how would we summarize this trip? We really liked our guide, Petra, not only was she informative, she shared her life story with us throughout the trip. We also really liked our small ship, only 50 people, with a great staff. It really is nice when you can share your experience with a small group. We probably saw more medieval fortifications than in any other trip. We expected the highlight of the trip to be Dubrovnik, and it was great especially the opportunity to see it at night. But we were pleasantly surprised by Diocletian's Palace in Split, and were blown away by the natural sights in Plitvicka Jerzera National Park and all of Slovenia.  Now you've read all about it, if you want to see more pictures and video, there is a 27 minute video available on youtube.