Tuesday, July 20, 2010

Spring Trip 2010 – Day 27 – Cypress Hills Interprovincial Park – Part 2

Our next destination this day was the Conglomerate Cliffs….

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The road to the cliffs went off to the right, just after the information sign….it wasn’t much of road and I was beginning to wonder as it seemed to go on for quite a while….

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But it did eventually lead us to this point….

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Here is the sign we found there…..

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and here is the view…note the snow still down in there in some areas….

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This view shows a bit more of the cliffs themselves….I think we are looking northward or possibly north west here…

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looking more eastward now….

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eastward again..

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a ground level shot….we’ll get to the wildflowers in a minute….

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Ernie and Shantz taking in the view….

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Ernie took this close up of the conglomerate rock that forms these cliffs….it doesn’t look all that stable to me!

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It wasn’t just the view that made this place so interesting….it was the array of wildflowers as well, especially on the east facing hillsides where I guess the sun warmed things up the quickest….

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this hillside was actually quite steep and covered in pine needles as well as dried grass so we were risky life and limb in getting these wildflower close ups…

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This is apparently ‘Blackish Locoweed’….

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and these are Cut-leaf Daisies….we saw these in the Yukon and they grow in hot dry areas in B.C. as well….the white petals are very short lived so you usually just see the yellow ‘buttons’

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Here is some of that Musineon which we first saw back at Chin Lake in Alberta…

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This is Smooth Blue Beardtongue….just in bud….we’ll see it in flower later on in this trip….

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Here is some Field Chickweed along with the Beardtongue…

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Some more of that Owl Clover, seen back at Chin Lake and Dinosaur Provincial park….

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and yup!  Prairie Crocus!

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Here is some Early Cinquefoil…..there was lots of ‘yellow’ with the Cinquefoil, Musineom and Dandelions…

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Early Locoweed as well…

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there is another Beardtongue on the hillside…this might give a bit of an idea of the angle of the hill…

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and there is a cluster of Prairie Crocus….there were lots of these clusters spread throughout the entire grassy plateau….

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I have to throw this picture that Ernie took in as well….his camera (Panasonic) actually seems to take better wildflower pictures than any of them!

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There weren’t a lot of birds in the area of the cliffs….but I did spot this Townsend’s Solitaire…

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there were also Chipping Sparrows (picture) and Savannah Sparrows (not pictured) and Junco (also not pictured)

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and robins….where aren’t there robins????  So after a break for lunch….we’ll continue on with this days explorations.

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