Tuesday 3 June 2014

A Point Of Interest

Traveling through the Prairies is interesting to a point. It's great to be able to cycle through a region that we all studied during Geography lessons at school. It's wonderful to see the rolling fields and the huge skies that go on for ever. Last Saturday, for example, as we had lunch, I lay back and thought 'Saturday afternoon in the Prairies'- how good is that!  So much better than a 'usual' Saturday afternoon shopping or watching the football scores come in on television. 

That said, there is a limit to how interesting the Prairies can be when you are travelling at bicycle speed.  I mean a field is a field.  Susan, however, likes to see the subtle differences and is a great observer of the detail.  For Susan, every field is different and she is perfectly content with the never changing landscape.  Or as Susan would say 'the ever changing landscape'.  

I'm a bit more of a person who has to be entertained all the time.  So whenever I see a sign on the highway marked 'Point of Interest' I am delighted.  Unfortunately, when we stop at the relevant lay-by the point of interest is missing.  It is apparent that there once was a sign that has since been removed.  Obviously it was not that interesting in the first place!  We do gaze around looking for what it might have been but all we can see are fields.

Fortunately we did come across a 'real' point of interest that was mildly interesting and as we have no pictures of the magnificent Rockies for this part of the cycle we thought we would share a picture of a boulder.


Now this is no ordinary boulder - it is a 'buffalo' boulder! 

Susan is standing by a boulder that was brought to the Prairies thousands of years ago by a glacier.  When herds of buffalo freely roamed the Prairies these buffalo used this boulder as a scratching stone. What the photo can't really show is that the boulder is smooth from all the rubbing and it sits at the bottom of a 6 foot deep circular trench worn by the buffalo.  There used to be many such boulders across the Prairies but they have since been removed for farming.  The buffalo have long since disappeared too.  This boulder is a nice 'symbol' of how things were before the first settlers came to Canada. 

Now this is not the most interesting story but we are in the Prairies after all.  I'm sure that during your day you will encounter much more interesting things.  If you don't then you should be a little worried :)

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