Southern SK and AB

Douglas Prov Park (SK) to Elkwater (AB)

After we left Douglas Provincial Park, we pointed the van Southwest and travelled through some beautiful but somewhat monotonous prairie farm land. I love the old decrepit farm houses out in the fields with their weathered wood frames, broken windows and often collapsed roofs. We stopped in Swift Current to pick up some supplies and kept heading west.

It was a hot drive. Stinking hot. Our van has air conditioning, but it currently doesn’t work. I took it into a garage before leaving Thunder Bay to get it fixed but they weren’t able to fix it before we left. We have a thermometer in the van and it was displaying 34 degrees, which I think is a little warmer than it actually was but it’s still hot. We had the fans running full blast and the rear exhaust fan drawing air out which helped a bit but it was still uncomfortable. We may have to stop and get the a/c fixed at some point. We aren’t big a/c users, but we may have hit our breaking point over the last couple of days.

We also broke our no more long drives rule. There was no reprieve from the heat so we kept driving hoping we’d find a lake or river to cool off in. We even stopped in a few places optimistically named such as Gull Lake but there was no lake to be found. So we kept driving. We drove all the way to Cypress Hills Prov Park in Southwestern Saskatchewan. We went way over on the km budget!

We stayed the night in a nice rustic campground in Cypress Hills. We had the whole place to ourselves. The next day we went and checked out the Fort Walsh National Historic site. They had done a big renovation and were late opening so the site wasn’t officially open yet but they were doing some staff training so they turned the lights on in the museum and let us check it out. We hiked around with the dogs and explored the old fort a bit before taking off. A few more vehicles showed up to check out the site (there was no signage that it was closed) but the staff had locked up the visitor centre so we passed our maps onto another couple, ate some lunch and hit the road again.

Cypress Hills is an inter-provincial park so it straddles the SK and AB border. We travelled the narrow and rutted gravel/clay road to the AB side. We were thankful we had a high clearance vehicle, but then we met a Lincoln Continental on the road. They must have been carefully navigating because it was pretty bad in spots.

50km later we arrived on the Alberta side and wow, what a beautiful park! We stayed in the town of Elkwater and had a couple of days of biking and hiking. They have some really nice trails there but there is lots of climbing as the trails are above the town and climb up the top of the ridge behind which is 1000m higher. These were Kim and I’s first couple of rides of the season on our mountain bikes so we were pretty winded. On the second day I got Kim to shuttle me up to the lookout so I could have a 3 or 4 km descent back into town. Can’t wait to ride more new trails!

The day ended on another high note when we travelled to Medicine Hat and stayed with Kim’s cousin Heath. We broke down and accepted his offer to stay inside the air conditioned house instead of in the van in the driveway. We had a good visit and got a good nights sleep. A great way to cap off our first week on the road.