Rob-n-Hild, oot and aboot eh? Sorry - 2022
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Grasslands National Park - Regina (626 km, driving time : 7 hours 50 minutes, max elevation: 987) 
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Well, we are into week 7 and still going strong! The clouds stayed
with us all night so there was no more star-gazing. When we got up we
didn't know today was going to quite as long as it turned out, but we
had eggs for breakfast anyway (as we had to eat them and didn't
figure we would get a chance later!). We packed up and checked out
of our oTENTik, saying goodbye to our hosts - the birds whose home we
were sharing - and took the drive up along the valley edge called
Badlands Parkway. This was a nice tour with viewpoints looking down
into the valley - not the one we had walked yesterday (although it
looked very similar), but it was still very interesting and gave us
a chance to view the scenery from above instead of at ground level.
The drive got us very close to the US border - the bottom line in the map above! That's where we sat down on Parks Canada's famous red Muskoka or Adirondack chairs in the many national parks and historic sites. The lookout point was called "Ta Sunka Watogla" which means "Running Buffalo Horse Butte" named so by Anpa Wicahpi Wi (Morning Star Woman) after she saw a herd of wild horses thundering by. We can really picture the horses running past this vantage point. |
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| The next viewpoint was called "Mauvais Terres" (Badlands). While it is pretty - especially with all the spring flowers - we can see why French furtraders first called this the badlands. It was hard to make a living here back then. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Another viewpoint was called "Kapesiwin" (Campsite) told us that the are has many
traces of people living in the area. Some items are more than 3,000 years old. We didn't
stay long enough to look for any artifacts ourselves, but the amount of dung
left behind showed that this was the cattles' very favourite hang-out... and thus
came the (huge!) beetles too.
This lead to the lamest joke of the day (so far): We know that the cows brought the dung, but where did the beetles come from? Liverpool? Duh!... |
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| The next stop was to remember the Zahursky family made a living farming here 100 years ago. Their life was hard and we are pretty sure they would not have had any time to sit in their Muskoka chairs enjoying the view. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| At the Crackerjack viewpoint we lost all interest in sightseeing when a HUGE bee flew into the car, hit the window then Hild's shoulder and tumbled into the gap next to the handbreak!! Everybody out of the car!! We imagined that the size of the bee could mean it was a queen and her protectors would be just around the corner. Hild quickly pulled out the tongs from the picnic bag (also known as the flame-off-tool). Quick, pick up the bee and off with it into the grass. Back into the car and close the doors. No worker bees in sight. Phew - dodged a bullet there. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| After that bit of action, we waived good-bye to the Grasslands National Park and headed northish to Moose Jaw for food - both for us and Mary Jane. On the way we saw some pretty gigantic farm equipment. Much entertainment although sometimes hard to overtake these big monstrosities. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Apart from our usual picnic and to fill up, we only made one quick stop to
get a photo of Mac the Moose - the world's biggest moose statue. It
was located next to a Snowbird - Canada's aerobatic display jets who
we have seen in the air quite a few times now and who are based in
Moose Jaw. It is a good place to practice aerobatics here - lots and
lots of sky!
Later we learnt that there has been an ongoing, friendly competition with Norway on who has the world's biggest moose statue. Currently it is held by Moose jaw because the took of Mac's antlers and installed slightly bigger ones to reclaim the title. The old antlers were left on the floor next to Mac! We think the Canadian version looks better - a shiny moose just doesn't look right... |
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We had a (very) quick look into the Visitor Center with
stories of Moose Jaw's notorious past as a stop on the
booze-smuggling trail during prohibition, but we had made a sort of
spur of the moment decision to take in Loreburn and the Gardiner Dam
on the way to Regina as opposed to driving back there tomorrow) so we
didn't have time to see anything else in Moose jaw - this time!
As you will see if you look at today's map, the Gardiner Dam is not actually on the way between Moose Jaw and Regina, but as it is nearer to Moose Jaw, it made (some) sense to go there first, rather than drice to Regina and drive back in the morning. Besides, we had two places to visit in that area. The town of Loreburn where our neighbour Sharon is from nestles just to the south east of the Gardiner Dam so we paid a short visit to the town. We took some downtown photos but did not have the time or internet connection to navigate to the exact location of the church nor the graveyard Sharon had mentioned to us. It was fun to look around a small town which seemed to still be going strong (as shown by the two grain elevators!). |
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| The Gardiner Dam was built in the late 1950's and has created a very very big lake behind it - Diefenbaker Lake - which has become a very popular recreation spot in addition to the hydroelectricity and irrigation water supplied by the lake. We saw an old but very interesting film on the building of the dam at the visitor center - and had a really nice chat with the lady manning the visitor center about the lake and how it is to live in the area. The water level is quite low just now as they are waiting for the run off from the melting snow in the Rockies to get there. From the dam, the South Saskatchewan river carries on through Saskatoon and drains into Lake Winnipeg and from there into the Hudson Bay. The water has a long journey to reach the sea! | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| By the time they closed the visitor center and threw us out, it was 5 and we still had to get to Regina, so Hild got behind the wheel and motored off down the road. It was over 200 km, but with a nice road we got here in a bit over 2 hours and could check into out hotel with time to nip out and get some dinner. On the road today Snusmumrikken (finally) got an an active cell-phone connection and we got all of the emails, whatsapps and various other messages that had been waiting for us since we went dark is Southern Saskatchewan. It will take a bit of time to catch up.... | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Coming up: Oot and aboot in Regina (+ some billable work and web-page-writing) | Start | Nerdy | The Largest... | Ornaments | Go To Previous Day | Go To Next Day |
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May/June 2022