Day 34: Grasslands

Anything you say about Grasslands National Park just west of the southern Saskatchewan badlands and a mere 10 kms from the US border is going to sound like superlative. Stunning in its desolate beauty, remarkable for the silence you 'hear' all around as you strike out on foot on the 70 mile Butte trail as the sun sets, astounding in its dark sky starry wonder...It is all these things, and to speak it almost robs this wild and remote terrain of its extraordinary splendour.

Let's just say that the route in from
Moose Jaw was fabulous and lyrical...Empty backroads through endless fields of rippling green and yellow and white crop; that 'The Crossing' resort and campground where we spent the night on the fringes of the park with its two serviced RV sites and its four lonely tipis was the ideal place to fully appreciate the Grasslands; that we had a dawn breakfast with the bisons (which Rona didn't fully appreciate) and turned our hand to lassoing steer (which Rona did appreciate) on our trek into the Grasslands hinterland at 6am - the better to see the rare black-tailed prairie dogs in action; and that we hit the 5000 km mark for our trip in this most gloriously haunting Canadian landscape. Enjoy the photos!