August 27th to 29th Glenbow Ranch PP, Cochrane and Bearspaw farmers markets.

Friday ..time to get out on the trails again. There are a lot of great trails around, but most of the ones closer to the city are …well….just not that interesting…We picked out Glenbow Ranch Provincial Park with its variety of trails. https://www.albertaparks.ca/media/123423/glenbow_ranch_pp_-_park_map_with_trails.pdf

Lovely park, well laid out with lots of historical information scattered through the park. Easy walk though….mostly paved double wide paths’

Nice walk…..nice day…..and then right at the end we noticed the sign we really should have seen at the start…!!!!

A bit of investigation yeilded us two local farmers markets for visiting…first was the Cochrane Farmers market on the Saturday…..very close by 11mins from campground by car…..

Cochrane Farmers Market

Lots of cars were arriving, it was a fairly big, quite spread out (good COVID distancing) market…..lots of produce, live music and some interesting local businesses. We bought a couple of Pasties…a bit pricey…but we have been on the road long enough that puff pastry seemed like a real treat…..we were entertained by the meat one….it was supposed to be steak and mushroom…but the little pastry thing on top looked more like hippo…!!!

We also managed to score some ground bison and some ground elk…….there will be a review on the elk on some future post….

Sunday was Bearspaw Farmers Market just outside Airdrie, AB.

Bearspaw Farmers Market

We arrived early for this one….and the cars were already lined up both sides of the road and the parking area was completely jammed. This was a great little market…..

First vendor we came upon was a lady with all different variatals of garlic….5 for 10 bucks…how could anyone resist….the fifth one we bought was a combination of two of the specialty ones…..

If you ever find yourself in the vicinity…this one is worth a visit……

Sunday afternoon took us on a little side trip to Inglewood….one of the nicest little suburbs in Calgary…..they close the main street to cars in the summer time….its a bit like Paris….lots of interesting little stores…

………and then I spotted this little tiny woodpecker in the tree above where we parked the truck….

The next walk we did was the Grotto Canyon Trail…another Alberta park…….but it’ll be the next post….it was an epic hike…!!!

Heres me hard at work again…!!!😂