Spring Trip 2010 - Day 32 - Last day in Saskatchewan

This will be the very last entry for this trip ~ at least until such time as my desktop gets dealt with and even then, only if we can retrieve the pictures in it. Seems the problem is more serious than a simple fix.....and was caused by the touchiness of the Vista operating system....now we either have to go back to Windows XP or upgrade to Windows 7....something I just can't afford right now.....

So here we are....May 23rd, the Sunday of the May long weekend...day 32 of this bizarre trip...it had finally quit snowing sometime during the night.

We woke to about a foot and half of the white stuff! Here is the camp chair that we'd sat on, on the Friday, in the sun, reading....

Conservation officers started working their way through the campground, letting everyone know that the good news was that the sun was shining and that they were getting the roads plowed....the bad news was that more snow was on it's way...snow was expected on both Monday and Tuesday. They didn't tell people they should leave while the going was good, but they certainly implied that.

By 10:30 in the morning the mass exodus had begun with neighbours helping neighbours get packed up and out...the road was plowed but the campsites of course, weren't. We were lucky, the snow plow saw we were packing up and plowed into our site as much as he could.

Pretty much ready to pull out...thank goodness for 4 wheel drive...it was fun finding everything under the snow...in fact we missed a dog water bowl...so someone will have found one when (if) the snow ever melted.....

A lot of people were stopped at the park office, I guess trying to get refunds for paid camping fees. Even though we'd paid for another night, we didn't bother, figuring it wasn't the parks fault that they got all this snow....so now we are down on the level, or almost level...there was a truck and travel trailer off the road and against a farm fence in this section....at least they'd stayed upright....

This is the intersection where the park road joined highway 21....this is looking south, we headed north towards Maple Creek

Heading north....

and now here we are in Maple Creek where the only snow is that which is on all the units hightailing it from Cypress Hills! Stopped for fuel and sandwiches from the Subway since it was now lunch time.

Turning west on Highway 1....not a sign of snow anywhere except for those glistening white hills sitting on the horizon....those hills are 'Cypress Hills'....we thanked our lucky stars that we had chosen to go to the Center Block because I suspect anyone who was in the West Block where we had started out, was going to be there for a while!

This Rest area welcomes you to Saskatchewan....we, of course, were leaving.....and on to Medicine Hat in Alberta....

Civilization! and blue skies....stopped at the big Super Store that was one of many many businesses at the edge of town. Replenished supplies, it was sunny and 12 degrees but very very windy. Well we sat in the parking lot the snow continued to melt off the top of our camper creating an embarrassingly large puddle!

The question now was 'Now What?' It was the middle of the May long weekend!!! We decided to head towards Writing on Stone. We knew that it would be hopeless to get in there, but we knew there was a community campground at the visitor's center at Milk River so thought we might be able to get in there, or failing that, just park in the visitor's center parking lot...or, we also knew that most small towns had campgrounds so maybe we'd find something on the way....

as luck would have it ~ that is exactly what happened. We came to a little town (village would be a better description), called 'Grassy Lake' on Highway 3, that had quite a large campground/recreation area. One end of the campground was busy with what looked like a ball tournament going on, but the other end, the serviced end, was empty....so for $15 which included power, we set up and decided to spent the night. This was the scenery looking directly south from the campsite.

So here we are, sunny, 14 degrees, warm enough that all the wet mats, chairs etc. are outside drying and the windows and doors are open to dry everything inside as well. We're still about 100km from our next destination....which was Writing on Stone...and hopefully, with luck (and the computer god's help), we'll get there before too long....

Spring Trip 2010 - Day 31 - Cypress Hills

It has taken me a while to get on with posting this story of our spring trip. The desktop computer is still not working. The son of the friend who was going to call, hasn't..... the weather remains hot so I can't take the computer anywhere....even when I've got the car, like I will tomorrow, for a dentist appointment, I have to go straight there and back because I know it'll be close to 90 degrees in this little box we call home....life would be much simpler if we a) didn't have dogs b) had air conditioning c) had a husband who knew anything at all about computers so I could just send it off with him when he goes to work each day. OH WELL....I guess one of these days it will get looked at..... The story of the trip is going to come to a halt very rapidly anyway because we're almost to the stage where the only pictures are in that computer!

In the meantime....back to the trip....It is now Saturday, May 22nd and we woke to ....

SNOW! That is what it looked like when we opened the camper door.....

From the 'bedroom' window....the picnic table and camp chair where we sat in the sunshine and read the day before......

In the morning I decided to walk back down to that little lake we had visited the first day....thinking it would be neat to get some 'birds in the snow' pictures..... The road, at this stage, was still bare and wet.....

There is something just 'wrong' about seeing a Warbler in snow. This was a male Yellow rump Warbler, of the Audubon variety (yellow under chin, not white)....I think it was getting little bugs off the underside of the leaves.....

Kind of an eerie looking landscape.....

The path I was following was definitely turning white.....

By the time I reached the lake (which according to my notes is called 'Loch Leven'....the snow, which had been quite light, really started to come down and was driven by a strong wind....I'm pretty sure that is a Caspian Tern on the shore, one of several....along with the pair of Canada Geese (according to Ebird....IF these are Caspian Tern that would be really exciting....)

There were lots of Chipping Sparrows on the sandy area of the beach.....

The poor Red-Neck Grebe was still sitting on the nest...trying to keep eggs warm in the driving snow must have been a challenge....hope they made it.

You can barely make out this female Red Wing Blackbird through the snow....

Hard to see but there were lots of Tree Swallows and even Black Terns flying really low over the water....I guess that is where any bugs that might have ventured out in the weather, were.

a last look one way (the wind was at my back when I faced this direction)....

and blowing right into my face (and camera) when I faced this way....

back in the trees the wind was better but there was no let up in the snow.....

This squirrel had the right idea, it was sitting on the leeward side of the tree to eat it's lunch.

Here is what I'm sure is a Pink - sided Junco....even though Ebird doesn't have them on the species list for that area.....

Back at the camper, even Shantz looks thoroughly disgusted by the weather! We saw a couple of units pull out, but pretty much everyone else was just hunkered down, waiting it out.

We attempted another walk in the afternoon. By then, there were 6 to 8 inches on the ground....

The poor birds, like this Swainson's Thrush were in any clear area they could find...in this case it is only clear because there was water there......

another look at the Swainson's Thrush between the snowbanks.....

and here are some Robins and other assorted species....

the trail.....

The amphitheater....that was as far as we made it, it was just too deep to slog through....

The road now was definitely 'white'....

There is the camper..... thank goodness we'd had the foresight to deal with the tanks the day before.....

Even poor April seems in shock....we'd had to plonk her in a tire track on the road so that she could 'pee'.....everywhere else was too deep for her....and inside she had to wear a sweater....our concern now was, would the propane hold out because the furnace was running virtually non-stop.

Come evening and it continued to snow...Ernie and Shantz ventured out again.....

Not me! but I didn't have to. While I was doing the supper dishes these deer wandered past the campsite. Come bedtime, it was still snowing.

Spring Trip 2010 - Day 30 - Cypress Hills

Friday, May 21, we woke to sunshine and a temperature of 4 degrees....there was also a stiff breeze blowing. Ernie went down and paid for the next 3 nights ($26 for powered site - no 'out of province' extra fee being charged)....and learned that out on the plains...the wind was 'just screaming!'

It wasn't to be a terribly productive day. In the morning we searched out the dump station site and found the HUGE compound full of free fire wood where campers were perfectly welcome to come and load up their pick up trucks...a far cry from B.C.'s little bundles at $5 a pop! and then went in search of the 'Native Prairie Trail'....we didn't plan to walk the entire 6 km, but thought we'd walk a ways and see what we could see. It took some searching but we finally found the trail....it ran alongside the road, but hidden by a screen of trees.
Ernie took the above picture....we were on the top of what appeared to be another plateau...there was a campground up here called 'Meadow's Campground' that was pretty much just a big flat field or Meadow....the wind was having it's way there! Campers were having to 'batten down the hatches!' or at least tie down the awnings.

This is the road we were following....I'm not sure where the Dark-Sky Campground was...the trail ran along the other side of those evergreen trees.... there really wasn't anything terribly exciting along the trail (hence no pictures) and when we came to a trail 'intersection' with no directions....we decided to turn around and go back....besides it was getting kind of warm....

I took this, just to show that although in many ways this park was really 'civilized'....the campsites themselves often left something to be desired....some, like the one we were in, was leveled....but many weren't and some were so small that you'd have trouble getting a small car and tent on them, let alone an RV. You can see that this section was very open....where as where we were it was forested...

Speaking of 'forest'.....this Squirrel was busy beside our campsite.....

The ground, in open areas, especially along the paved trail that I featured yesterday, was covered in these little 'Spring Beauty' wildflowers....one of the earliest flowers to bloom once the snow melts....

Here is a closer look at the 'Spring Beauty' flowers....

and there is another look at the forest as it was behind our campsite...which was, by the way, 'War Lodge'

We didn't see a lot of birds that day....there were very few along the trail we had walked in the morning....did see this Yellow bellied Sapsucker....

And there were, of course, American Robins

The rest of the day we spent just sitting around, reading, enjoying the sunshine and cooking a proper meal for supper. Shantz and Ernie are actually both looking at a tennis ball that is up in the air there - look by the camper's window.

I'll now quote from my hand written journal 'It is now Friday evening. Ernie took the camper to the dump station and emptied the tanks and filled the water...partly due to the weather report ~ it is currently 12 degrees and sunny, but cloud is moving in and rain 'heavy along the Alberta border' is predicted ~ also temperatures as low as 1 degree ~ and that is on the flat, not up here....so it will be interesting to see what the next few days hold! This may be the reason why the campground is far from full - I'm not complaining, and they are streaming in, but apparently, last year, the entire park was full for the May long weekend by the Thursday afternoon!'