We’re pleased to announce the winners of our 2016 Cowboy Trail Photo Contest. The photos were even better quality than last year, and many entries aptly captured the spirit of the western lifestyle. Thank you to everyone who entered and who voted!

Judges Category: First Place

“Sometimes you just have to stop what you’re doing, and admire the beauty around you.” – Royce Olsen

Royce Olsen won first place with his photo “Sometimes you just have to stop what you’re doing, and admire the beauty around you.” This vividly colored photo depicts stunning Canadian scenery, and the horse’s expression captures the serene feeling we would all experience in such a beautiful setting. Royce’s prize is an Anchor D mountain day ride for two people.

Judges Category: Second Place

“My Parents on Their New Homestead” – Ella Michel

Ella Michel’s entry “My Parents on Their New Homestead” won second place in the Judges Category. This photo’s balanced composition and framing of horses and riders adds artistry to this western scene. Ella will receive a Stoney Nakoda Resort & Casino and Rockies Heli Canada getaway for her prize.

Voting Category

“Even snow won’t keep him away” – Leonard Heinonen

The voting category winner was chosen by our readers. Leonard Heinonen’s photo “Even snow won’t keep him away” received the most votes, winning him an authentic western 1 Night Getaway in Kananaskis! It includes accommodation in a Large Tipi or Trapper’s Tent at Sundance Lodges plus a “Ride and Lunch” package for two courtesy of Boundary Ranch.

We’ll announce the 2017 Experience the Cowboy Trail Photo Contest late this spring. Details will be published in our 2017 Cowboy Trail travel guide and on our website. In the meantime, you can still enter the Experience the Mountain Parks Photo Contest and the Experience Calgary’s Parks ‘n’ Paths Photo Contest!

Thank you to everyone who entered our 2016 Experience the Cowboy Trail Photo Contest. We received a number of entries capturing the spirit of the Cowboy Trail’s rich western heritage. We also appreciate everyone who voted for their favourite picture, which will help determine the winner of our Voting Category. Our judges will be examining the entries this week, and we are planning to announce the winners later this week.

For more opportunities to win, enter our Experience the Mountain Parks Photo Contest and our Experience Calgary’s Parks ‘n’ Paths Photo Contests.

“My Dad on the Homestead” – entry by Ella Michel

A while back, our publisher received a DVD in the mail, along with a short note. The note was hand-written by a woman, Marilee Leskiw, of Edmonton. This blog post from our publisher explains the rest of the story behind the DVD.

Marilee wrote to me that the enclosed DVD contained a short video that showed wild horses running beside her vehicle. They were running on the Coal Camp Road, near the Mountain Aire Lodge.

After watching her clip (which is embedded below), I did a little research and learned that this lodge is located on Alberta Hwy #40 (aka the Forestry Trunk Road), just south of where the road crosses the Red Deer River, about 60 km southwest of Sundre, Alberta.  Of course Sundre is located on Hwy #22 (The Cowboy Trail).

This is a remote area. Many of the roads have a gravel surface, so travel in this area can be a bit tricky, but the scenery is stunning.  Here is a Google Map link showing exactly where it is.

As I dug a bit deeper, I came across the term “feral” horse.  Wikipedia defines a feral horse is a free-roaming horse of domesticated ancestry. As such, a feral horse is not a wild animal in the sense of an animal without domesticated ancestors. However, some populations of feral horses are managed as wildlife, and these horses often are popularly called “wild” horses.

In 2015, the province estimated there were about 880 feral horses in the foothills area, and since they have no natural predators, the growing herd was damaging the grasslands for grazing both by livestock and wildlife. As a result, under Alberta’s Stray Animals Act, the RCMP hired wranglers to round up and capture some of these feral horses, which were then offered up to the public for adoption through the Wild Horses of Alberta Society.

The government appears to believe that these “wild” horses, perhaps like the ones shown on Marilee’s video, are not native to Alberta but rather descendants of domestic animals used in logging and mining operations more than 100 years ago.  However, some people oppose such captures, believing that the horses should be treated as part of Alberta’s cowboy heritage.

What do you think?

To learn more about this region of the province:

http://www.experiencethecowboytrail.com/sundre-area/

http://www.experiencethecowboytrail.com/stories/trail-riders-of-the-canadian-rockies/

Barbara Kadatz of Edmonton is now a proud owner of free cowboy boots! She won our Experience the Cowboy Trail 2016 Reader Survey Contest, and recently visited Alberta Boot in Calgary to receive her prize for being the survey contest winner. Ben Gerwing, owner of Alberta Boot, presented a $300 gift certificate to her. 

Barbara was able to put the gift certificate to use and went home with her own pair of brand new boots!

Thank you to everyone who submitted their feedback for our 2016 Reader Survey. Although the survey contest is over, we still welcome feedback about our publication. And be sure to check out our 2016 Experience the Cowboy Trail Photo Contest for a chance to win some other great prizes!

To learn more about The Cowboy Trail, head to http://www.experiencethecowboytrail.com. Here you can also read current and back issues of all of our Experience Travel Guides & Maps on your PC or your mobile device.

An ancient Blackfoot dinner was unearthed on Tuesday, October 4, 2016. A carbon of a roasting pit was found at the base of Head Smashed In Buffalo Jump. Remarkably, the roasting pit is completely intact and includes a prepared meal that was never eaten. No one knows why the meal was left uneaten, but it’s a historical treasure.

Pincher Creek Voice

The carbon was completely encased in plaster and transported to the Royal Alberta Museum, where it will be on permanent display. The protective covering will be carefully removed, and then the roasting pit will be fully excavated and preserved over several months.

Royal Alberta Museum Inventory Curator Robert Dawe found the roasting pit in back in 1990 during an excavation. It was no small task to unearth the roasting pit while keeping it completely intact. Fifty different people were involved in this intense excavation project.

Piikani elder Conrad Little Leaf makes tobacco offering at dig site PC Pincher Creek Voice

Dawe stated that “By and large what we’re looking at is the processing and the celebration of a successful buffalo hunt.” The Plains people used to conduct large and risky events where they had hudreds of people herding buffalo toward a cliff. The buffalo would panic and run over the cliff. The aboriginal people were then provided with meat to eat.

Read more about this remarkable find in an article by Pincher Creek Voice and to view a video of the excavation!

Congratulations to Barb Kadatz for winning the 2016 Cowboy Trail Reader Survey Contest! Everyone who completed the survey was entered in a random draw to win a $300 gift certificate for a pair of cowboy boots, courtesy of Alberta Boot (www.albertaboot.com). Alberta Boot is Alberta’s ONLY Western Boots Manufacturer and is located just off of Macleod Trail, on 50th Ave SE in Calgary, Alberta. Barb has plans to travel the Cowboy Trail, and a new pair of boots will be perfect for the experience!

Thank you to everyone who entered! Feel free to continue to give us your feedback about this publication, and be sure to enter the 2016 Cowboy Trail Photo Contest.

We are truly excited by the recent announcement by the Scottsdale Convention & Visitors Bureau regarding their name change to Experience Scottsdale.

http://www.bizjournals.com/phoenix/news/2016/09/21/scottsdale-convention-visitors-bureau-is-now.html

In 2005, when I first thought of publishing a visitor’s guide to the mountain national parks in western Canada, I sat at the feet of the manager of a very important Visitor Information Centre.  He told me what travellers wanted to know and suggested ways on how to present that material.

As I chewed on what I had learned, the word Experience just naturally came to mind.  As the vision of our traveller’s guide came into focus, the only logical title became apparent to us: Experience the Mountain Parks (EMP).

We have published EMP each spring now for 11 years. Along the way, we have received hundreds of testimonials from not only our readers, but also the front line staff whose job it is to counsel travellers in the region. Here is just one example:

We are having a such a busy summer in our centre. Our main building itself is having over a thousand visitors every day. And as you might know already, Experience the Mountain Parks is the most popular brochure to visitors of all time. We have just used the last box of two of your magazines. Please send us more Experience the Mountain Parks and Experience the Cowboy Trail when you have a chance. They both go really fast.

Thank you always,
Traveling Counselors
(Travel Alberta Canmore Visitor Information Centre)

Over the past 2-3 years, we have started to notice that some of the communities in western Canada are starting to realize the value of this word, because they are starting to use it in the titles of their brochures. However, I’m not so sure that they fully understand what is needed in a guide in order to truly help the reader enhance their travels.

In 2017, we will launch our 4^th magazine to be titled Experience the Dinosaur Trails. It will be modelled, like its sister Publications, Experience the Cowboy Trails and Experience Calgary’s Parks ‘n’ Paths upon the foundation of success first built with EMP guide.

For more information, please visit www.cmiPublishing.ca.

Royce Chwin, Chief Executive Officer at Travel Alberta recently wrote about experience tourism:

Not long ago, my wife and I took some visiting friends on a road trip along The Cowboy Trail (Hwy. 22). It was a classic blue-sky Alberta day and we enjoyed the awe-inspiring scenery of the foothills and grasslands as we drove.

We visited the iconic towns of Black Diamond and Longview, and stopped in Turner Valley for a mouth-watering burger at the Chuckwagon Café and, later, for a fascinating lesson on Alberta distilling while sipping a crisp, artisanal gin at Eau Claire Distillery.

It was an amazing day. All very authentic. Very Alberta. We still talk about those memories.

That experience came to mind when I was thinking about last month’s blog about seizing the opportunity to leverage tourism as an economic builder, and how a critical part of any destination strategy is to identify the “experiences” people can have while visiting.

Our day on The Cowboy Trail, and indeed the hundreds of other days I’ve spent visiting every corner of the province, are made special by the opportunities to do things that are fun, exciting and interesting. And I’m not talking about just Stampede-size experiences, but the array of intimate, authentic interactions that make you feel part of the community you’re visiting.

For the full story, go here: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/lets-capitalize-experience-economy-royce-chwin?trk=hp-feed-article-title-publish

We whole-heartedly agree! In fact, we thought the same thing when, in 2013 we launched Experience the Cowboy Trail, as an annual visitor guide. We based the design of this magazine on the template we created in 2005 for Experience the Mountain Parks.

This summer, we announced the spring 2017 launch of Experience the Dinosaur Trails. This will be CMI Publishing’s 4th magazine. The other is Experience Calgary’s Parks ‘n’ Paths. To learn more about our experiential travel guides, and two map projects, check out www.CMIpublishing.ca. Keep up the great work, Royce Chwin.

Rob Lennard, widely known as “Alberta’s History Wrangler,” wants you to join him in celebrating Alberta’s 111th birthday tomorrow (September 1)! No need to bring gifts to this party, and you’ll still get to enjoy cake and entertainment! Thus far, Alberta’s birthday has only been celebrated in 2005 for the centennial and last year at the Bow Valley Ranch. Most Alberta residents have forgotten what year Alberta became a province. The History Wrangler is on a mission to change that.

At this birthday party, you’ll get to relive history by watching a reenactment of original inauguration speeches from 1905. Rob’s Dusty Saddle Gang Band will also be performing, and there will be cake for all to enjoy, too. An unofficial birthday flag (which received the most votes of a multitude of flags designs that Alberta students drew) will be raised at the party.

The celebration wraps up the History Wrangler’s 2016 tour and will be held at Calgary’s historic Bow Valley Ranch. The event is free and takes place from 5 PM – 8 PM.

This weekend the History Wrangler (Rob Lennard) will be giving free “pop up” music performances along the Cowboy Trail! If you’re in Mayerthorpe, Evansburg, Enthistle, Drayton Valley, Buck Creek and Elder Flats this Friday you might get to witness one of his interactive musical presentations. And there are more opportunities to hear him on Sunday – he’ll be surprising bystanders with more pop up performances in Edmonton and Millerville, Priddis, Bragg Creek, Cochrane, Cremona, Sundre and Caroline on Sunday with his daughter. These fun events are part of the History Wrangler’s 2016 Cowboy Trail Tour.

Rob weaves historical stories in with his concerts. Since Rob likes to challenge his audience with questions about Alberta’s history, you’ll get to participate, too! History has never been more fun before.

The History Wrangler’s 2016 Cowboy Trail Tour ends on September 1 at a special celebration for Alberta’s 111th birthday. You won’t want to miss it! The celebration will be held at Calgary’s historic Bow Valley Ranch. Attendees will watch a reenactment of original inauguration speeches from 1905. Rob’s Dusty Saddle Gang Band will be performing, and there will be cake for all to enjoy, too. The event is free and takes place from 5 PM – 8 PM.

For more details on the historic birthday celebration of Alberta, read this High River Times article.