Alberta the land of riches and tornadoes

Kinbrook Island Provincial Park, Tilley, Canada

Knowing we had a long drive today across the rest of Saskatchewan and into Alberta we tried for an early start. The real story of the day was the dramatic sky. Unlike where we live in Nevada City, which is situated in an evergreen forest, the prairie is wide open. You get a fantastic 360 degree view and can see for miles and miles. Today we saw storms brewing and abating with dramatic colors. By the time we reached Medicine Hat, it was quite warm, perhaps in the 80's and we thought the best way to explore the city was on bike. Medicine Hat has 92 kilometers of paved bike trails. What is so amazing about this is that the provinces of Manitoba and Saskatchewan have very few paved roads so these paved bike paths seemed like such a luxury. All the roads in Alberta are in much better condition, with a conspicuous lack of potholes, and there is an abundance of asphalt such as in parking lots and side streets. We really enjoyed biking through the city, along the river and seeing several beautiful stately homes. Medicine Hat also has the distinction of having the world's tallest teepee, for whatever that is worth. While the other provinces seemed to be about making a living and not a lot of emphasis on aesthetics Medicine Hat at least seemed like a town that was working to present itself well. Heck, we even found a health food store and I could load up on Kombucha again!
We left Medicine Hat late in the day and headed for a provincial park, situated on an island lake about 90 minutes east of Calgary. When we pulled in a fellow camper told us of a tornado that had been spotted and was headed our way. Interestingly enough, a few hours earlier Ned had asked should we be concerned about the look of the clouds where we were headed. He said it looked like a tornado in the distance. They definitely had a funnel shape. While we were a bit concerned about the impending storm, we did hop on our bikes to take some great photos of the storm and wild cloud patterns in the distance. The park has a cinder block building that houses a laundry room and showers. Rather than set up camp we decided it was probably more prudent to hang close to that building (and I used the opportunity to get caught up on laundry). Another camper listening to the radio said that the likelihood of a tornado had lessened (from a warning to a watch) so we set up camp and enjoyed the beautiful, but dramatic evening. We saw a rainbow and at 10:00 at night, with still bright skies, the clouds parted and it felt like 7:00 pm. We lied in bed and watched the sky in the distance flash with lightening, but there was no thunder and no rain. Just incredible gusts of wind. It was about 11:00 before the night finally enveloped us. Amazing. I wish I could have put today on a time lapse video and showed what we experienced. Hopefully the pics below give some idea.