Tuesday we awoke to an overcast, slightly cooler, day. After breakfast (all the usual plus strawberry and blueberry pancakes, along with huge homemade beef sausages), most of us gathered in the kitchen to sign up for next year's bookings. And then we headed off to fish! Luckily, I caught my first fish of the week -- a smallish rainbow on a nymph. It felt good; I was beginning to think I was jinxed. By about 1 p.m., the clouds had dispersed and the sky was blue again.

Nonetheless, CarolAnn and I decided to take some time to go into the town of Coleman to visit the Frank Slide Interpretive Center, which tells the story of a dreadful disaster in 1903, when a huge landslide buried at least 76 people alive. The photo at the left shows Turtle Mountain today. We got to the center just in time to see the last showing of a very good video depicting the tragedy.

The area offers a good number of other interesting excursions: The Leitch Colleries, a collection of mining relics from one of the earliest and most ambitious coal mining operations in the Crowsnest Pass, which Bruce and I visited last year; the Bellevue Underground Mine Tour (haven't done this); and if you're willing to drive about 50 minutes from Crowsnest Pass (haven't done this either, but it sounds fascinating), there's the UNESCO World Heritage Site: Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump, the world's largest and best preserved buffalo jumps. (Prehistoric North American natives, says a guidebook, pursued their quarry and would drive them over a cliff to their deaths.) Sounds a bit "unsportsman-like" but these were prehistoric folks, and besides, the herds of buffalos were enormous in those days.

Speaking of critters, here are a few really lovable ones around the Sara's place: On the right is Yodels, the cat. Below are the two dogs. You've already met Rolly; the little one is Cecil -- who I would love to have put in my suitcase and taken him home to Chicago. They look like they're fighting, but actually they're having a rollicking good time!
For dinner that evening, CarolAnn and I met Jerry and Bruce in town and had a splendid time. Later, when Bruce and I went back out (Bruce to fish and me to write some notes), we saw three or four deer with a fawn as they stepped into the river to drink. Unfortunately, they ducked into the bushes along the bank before I could grab my camera.