Monday July 27th
After another pancake breakfast the girls went to the park and Angus and I visited the Buffalo Nations Museum. A bit of a tacky tribute to the First Nations (don’t think about calling them Indians) it was nonetheless a very interesting insight into various aspects of native culture: did you know that babies were carried in bags filled with moss which acted as natural nappies and were then simply emptied and filled with fresh moss; or that many traditional decorations (belts, necklaces etc) were made with dyed and braided porcupine quills?
We visited Safeway (never before have I seen peanut butter in 2 kilo jars –that explains a lot!) and went off for a picnic, but our first drizzle and the second battalion of Barclay Pickering detecting mosquitoes drove us out of the woods and back to the Y. After a lazy slump we took ourselves off to the Banff Hot Springs, not quite on a par with the Miette Springs at Jasper but a good way to spend an afternoon. By evening, the rain had set in and for the first time it seemed like we had actually brought those cagoules and fleeces for a reason, so we stayed put and ate dinner at the Y.
