Saskatchewan: Land of the Living Skies

Although we only spent the course of a long weekend in Saskatchewan, it was a fun filled, adventurous week full of new and unexpected experiences. From exploring the Capital city, to backpacking in bison and rattlesnake country and everything in between. Your not gonna wanna pass up this read :)

July 17th, 2018, after a five hour drive from Manitoba we have a arrived in yet another new province, Saskatchewan! Upon our arrival, we really hadn't thought much about what we wanted to see or do here yet. So we just winged it, and stopped wherever seemed to catch our interest. The drive throughout Saskatchewan, is everything you would imagine it to be.. flat and full of farmers fields. It has a beauty of its own, driving along the country roads, with fields every direction you look, and windmills, its all amazing. Without the intention, we quickly found ourselves in the heart of Regina. Which was quite a nice surprise, the city is quite beautiful and filled with historic monuments. We somehow stumbled across the Saskatchewan legislative building. The building was built in 1908, and

in 1939 King George VI and Queen Elizabeth came to Saskatchewan to visit the building. This was a big deal for Saskatchewan, and if you ever come to visit the legislative building you will see how important this was to the province, as there are plaques, and memorials of the date posted all over the property. In addition, the property also holds a memorial for World War 1, dedicated to in honor of those who lost their lives fighting. The architecture of this building, really is amazing, and something worth seeing in itself. As you can see from the photo, it was late in the evening by the time we arrived here, which meant that we needed to get ourselves parked for the night, however, being in a big city finding a place to park overnight to sleep is quite a task. We drove around for about a good hour and a half searching for anywhere to park at this point. Off the highway just outside of Moose Jaw we FINALLY stumbled across a gas station/travel plaza where all the transport trucks sleep. So, we joined them for the night and made ourselves at home. Although it was just a parking lot essentially, we woke up to some beautiful prairie sunflowers right beside the truck :)

Grasslands National Park

For those of you who've always wanted to see the desert, and thought you had to leave Canada to find one.. you are wrong. Little did I know, until we found it, Saskatchewan is home to a desert. SO look no further! Grassland National Park is the place your going to want to check out! It is amazing watching the landscapes change so drastically in a matter of hours, within the same province. Once you enter the park, it suddenly becomes dry, hot, and the flatness you except to see in Saskatchewan is replaced with mountainous valleys. Jesse and I agreed to spend the rest of the day hiking out into the back country until we found a good place to pitch a tent and stay the night. We registered at the Bear paw sea trail, and hiked 6 km out into the Canada's Badlands, also known as rattlesnake and bison country ;) The hiking views were spectacular! However, we had to spend a good portion of our hike watching our footing for rattlesnakes, and singing loudly to ensure we didn't sneak up on a wild bison! It was an exciting

experience! To make things even more exciting, we found three deer antlers! One which we found within 2 minutes of starting our hike, the second midway, and the final one we found just before settling to pitch our tent! By 6 pm that evening, we found a beautiful mountain to pitch our tent on top. HOWEVER, mother nature decided to whirl up a nice black storm cloud with gusting winds strong enough to nearly send our tent flying off the side of the mountain. We tried waiting out the wind, until one of our tent pegs was pulled out of the ground, and a nice bright lightning bolt struck just off into the distance. We needed to find a protected area, and get off that mountain STAT. We were able to find a little area, protecting 3 sides of our tent, on the side of the mountain. Although the ground was not level, it served its purpose to protect us throughout the storm. Just as we got the tent set up the rain started, so we quickly got ourselves into the tent and settled in. We fell asleep to the sound of coyotes howling, it was so loud, and clear it sounded as though they

were just outside our tent. It was intimidating. We both woke many times throughout the night pulling ourselves up from the bottom of the tent, as we had slid slowly all night long due to the nice steady slope we were attempting to sleep on. However, we made it through the night, in one piece, although neither of us slept very well. When we opened up our tent, and peered outside, we found a wild bison standing nearly 100 ft away from our tent! We had to wait in our tent for the bison to move off a bit before we could start our 6 km hike back to the truck. We waited about half an hour to give ourselves some distance between the bison. We spoke loudly to ensure the bison knew we were there. Thankfully once it noticed us, he began walking in the opposite direction. So we started our trek back, up and down the mountains, singing as loudly as we could. When we reached the peak of a mountain and could see the other side, we were faced with yet, another bison!

This one, even closer! It was amazing and terrifying all at once. This one was just a little too close for comfort, but again, once we made ourselves known, we turned in the other direction. In fact, in the distance, we hiked parallel to the bison, nearly the entire way back to our truck. And, although we did not see a rattlesnake on our adventure, we did find snake skin on our hike back. This usually indicates that a snake is in the area, but I'll be honest, i really didn't want too see a rattlesnake so I'm quite relieved we didn't find one ;) Once we made it back to our truck, we unpacked and made ourselves a quick lunch. After lunch we went on one more quick hike before calling it a day and moving on with the trip. This hike was super unique, and took us along a "dogtown". This is the only place in Canada left where you can see prairie dogs in their natural habitat. There were SO many of them! The funniest part too is that they pop out of there burrows when you walk by, they are incredibly social animals, and super curious. Again though, we

spent a good portion of our hike watching our

footing, one.. for rattlesnakes, second for black widows. The black widow lives in abandoned prairie dog burrows. Now I understand why they call this place the "Badlands". Apparently, at the trail head just 20 minutes prior to our arrival, a couple had just seen a rattlesnake basking in the sun in the middle of the road! We just missed it. This trip was quite the adventure! On our drive out of the park, we had to slam the breaks for a cow crossing the road ! I found this pretty funny. You know your in the country when.. Our final stop in Saskatchewan, was a Walmart parking lot to spend the night before making the journey to Alberta. We were just itching to get to the mountains and start exploring Alberta, and felt that our adventures here in Saskatchewan were wild enough. With that being said, thanks for tuning in for another blog post. Up next, is Alberta so be sure to watch for the next blog posting!

Stay Wild,

Jesse & Jessica.