Day 182 and 183 Lethbridge to Fort McLeod to Claresholm, Alberta

Day 182 was a bit of a later start, so I had time to get a load of laundry done in Lethbridge.

A greyer day today as Kayla and I headed west to our medal bearer meeting point in Monarch, Alberta

For the first time in a long time, mountains! (These are part of the Rocky Moutains)

There's the turn-off

Monarch is another small, small farming town, the tallest structure is the water tower.

Our meeting point was at this church .

Wow!

As we were sitting in the parking lot waiting for someone to let us in, I noticed that the 3 relay vehicles that were there all had different graphics on the hoods. ( seemed interesting at the time)

Working for the event teams today was Brittney, who has come out from the Rick Hansen Foundation head office in Richmond to join us for a week.

 I think most of the community came out to the church meeting room for the relay presentation. The kids from Providence Christian School were supposed to have the day off. They voted to stay in school today just to be part of the 25th anniversary Rick Hansen relay.

And to support the three medal bearers from their school, Bertel, Bernice, and William.

These little guys even made their own medals!

Part of the presentation includes a slide show of Rick Hansen's story. This is a shot of Rick in one of the many wheelchair marathon races he competed in. (he won 19 races)

A shot of the start of the original man in motion world tour in 1985, as they left Oakridge mall in Vancouver.

The end of day celebration was Fort Macleod, but the services of Kayla and myself were not needed, so we headed back to Lethbridge. Here I am still trying to get "the" shot of that railroad bridge.

Back to to our little oasis

Oh yah, this morning while I was doing laundry, I had time to go over to SportChek and pick-up a snazzy new pair of "relay" runners.

Day 183, a very brief snow squall blew through town, adding a little ice and snow to the roads.

On the way to Claresholm for our meeting point, we did pass through Fort Macleod. (this pic is part of the original fort)

There's a whole lot of nothing.

What did people do before these things?

On the highway heading to our meeting point

The commuinty center was also the meeting place for the local Lion's club, who had their version of a map of Canada.

The community centre was also the sight of the Day 183 end of day celebration.

I guess our meeting was in the Lion's den.

These events would not be successful without the volunteers that make it happen. The lion's club cooked up a beef in a bun dinner for the community, and all money raised went to the Rick Hansen Foundation.

The pre-shuttle group shot. ( I see a lot of pride in this picture)

Kayla saw an opportune moment to get rid of some mail as we were dropping off the medal bearers for their segment

It is always nice to see the family and friends waiting for the medal bearers as we drop them off.

Our MC for the event, Billy, chats with Stephan, Claresholm's end of day medal bearer.

One final group picture with the 25th anniversary Rick Hansen medal.

There were more relay staff than medal bearers today to participate in the warm-up dance, very impressive!

Thank-you Claresholm, and the local Lion's club.

The grey skies were clearing, so it seemed like now or never..........

To take a short detour and head up the road to..............

Head Smashed-In-Buffalo Jump, this is the view from the interpretive centre.

We got there before closing time, but unfortunately, they had a power outage and the interpretive centre was closed.

This is a Unesco World Heritage Site

The panorama

It was still worth the trip.

On the way back to the highway, we did see real buffalo. (albeit farm buffalo)

Quite a change from the start of day 183

Long story short, my brother-in-law was telling me about this crane somewhere around Fort Macleod that he and his buddy had their pictures taken in 20 (????) years ago. So when I saw this rig in a farm field, I knew it had to be the one!

One more night in Lethbridge, then Calgary bound!