Writing-on Stone Provincial Park, Alberta

 To see more photos of Writing on Stone, click here
Today we started heading East across the Prairies of Alberta.  The winds picked up the morning we left Waterton. It was blowing 40km/hr (25miles/hr) winds forecast to increase to 60k/hr, gusting to 80! Probably a good time to pack up the tent before that happenend! So we headed east for the flat prairies leaving the mountains behind. The prairies were indeed flat as far as they eye could see, though not as dull as we were expecting. Farms flanked the road we took. The landscape of crops of corn or wheat were broken up with silos or grain elevators. Occasionally, there’d be an oil rig in the middle of a sea of wheat.

Once in a while the flat landscape would drop into a valley created by meandering rivers giving rise to unexpected oases of trees and lush undergrowth. Writing-on Stone Provincial Park was a highlight. A lush oasis with eroded rock formations called hoodoos. These reminded Martin of Cappadocia in Turkey: lots of unusual shapes and sizes of eroded rocks with funky layers and flat tops. Petroglyphs were depicting life of the Blackfoot Indians are carved into the rocks here. Pretty cool.

We were going to cross the province border in the very south, but hit dirt gravel roads every which way we turned, so decided to go north and take the main TransCanada Highway1 into Saskachewan. It was dark when we arrived in a campsite north of Moosejaw in a lush little valley on a lake. *Mush