Carstairs - Olds - Bowden - Innisfail

The first small town I stopped in was Carstairs. To start with, it has it's own pirate radio station at 88.5 FM playing the best in modern & hick country music. I've no idea where the signal comes from, but it covers about 3 kms and was powerful enough to walk over my sat radio (and I have the old kind the FCC don't like). The downtown looks much like a 'western" town. A very wide main street with buildings that are very far apart. A few of the buildings are boarded up, the rest are populated by small independent businesses. I stopped to eat there in a bar at the edge of town. It's much like what you'd see in a country music video, the boys out for a beer after work & the waitress talking about her pregnancy with the customers. It was clear everyone knew everyone & they probably wondered WTF I was doing there. While in there, I heard a song called "International Harvestor"...a country song about a 3rd generation farmer that likes driving his combine on the highway very slowly to piss off the city people. I have to admit, I found the song amusing and it's at least genuine. The rest of the town is a couple of hundred new houses, presumably populated by people who live there & drive to Calgary to work (it's about 65 kms).

Olds

Olds is a small city much like Carstairs. The one thing that differentiates it is that it has a college (Olds College). The grounds look pretty nice & the building seemed nice, but I found it odd there wasn't any "scene" around the school. Perhaps I've grown up in cities for too long, but I'm not sure I'd want to attend post secondary education in such a rural place.

Innisfail

Not much to report here. I took 2A through this town which was a mind numbing mistake as it becomes a gravel sideroad for a while due to construction. It's like most Alberta towns, it has a few businesses and a CO OP. A CO OP is a grocery chain in the West that is locally owned and broken down into regions. You buy into the store & then at the end of the fiscal year, they calculate how much you spent and send a cheque back to you. I'm presuming it was Alberta's method of supporting it's "own". The one in Calgary I shop at is called the Midtown Market & it's really nice. I also buy all my gas there too, so I get 10 cents back at the end of the year (per litre).