What an absolutely beautiful day! It was warm/hot, the
temperature somewhere in the low 30’s, and hardly a breeze or a cloud in the
sky. Both Ginny and I had the day off, which in itself is a treat. What shall
we do, was the question.
Then we both heard it, faintly at first, but it gradually
got louder and louder; the mating call of the V-Twin. Let’s go for a ride. But
where? West. Mountains. One can never go wrong with that choice.
After a quick fuel stop, we jumped on Hwy 3 westbound and
headed out of Lethbridge towards the mountains. A coffee break at A&W in
Fort MacLeod with a shared order of their awesome onion rings, and we were back
on the highway.

“In the early morning
of 29 April 1903, most of the almost 600 residents of the coal mining town of
Frank were asleep. At the coal mine, the night shift was down in the mine, and
a few men were working on the surface in the mine buildings.

“In about 90 seconds,
homes, buildings and lives were destroyed. The rocks covered part of Frank,
closed the entrance to the mine, and swept away the mine buildings and those
working in them. The miners underground managed to tunnel their way to the
surface. The slide had also buried a construction camp, livery stables, tents,
a store, and some ranch buildings. Seventy people are known to have died.
“The sound of the
slide had been heard kilometres away, and clouds of limestone dust hung over
the Pass for quite a while. While daily life gradually returned to Frank, the
slide remained an imposing presence. As one resident commented, ‘the slide is
always with us.’”
Well there you have a bit of a southern Alberta history
lesson. More than 110 years later, the Frank Slide really still is “an imposing
presence.”
After taking a couple pictures, it was back on the bike for
the return ride to Lethbridge. All in all, our trip was just shy of 300 km. It
really was an awesome day.
I wonder where we’ll go next.
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