Best Trip II - Sand, Rats and the Rocky Mountains

The Great Sand Hills of Saskatchewan sprawl over 1,900 square kilometres, an area slightly smaller than Luxembourg.  They were created along with the rest of the prairies by receding glaciers more than 10,000 years ago.  The sand is as fine as pastry flour.  The wind can sift and shift the dunes as much as 25 metres a day, so the landscape is always changing.  And the scale is awe-inspiring.     

Despite its desolation, the Great Sand Hills teem with life both large and small.  The area has been used by ranchers for more than a century.  Like the bison that once grazed here, the cattle are an essential part of the ecology, nibbling away at the grasses while leaving behind a little fertilizer.  We saw plenty of pronghorn antelope and mule deer, along with some early birds like meadowlarks, snow geese and hawks.  150 species of birds call the Sand Hills home, along with insects such as the tiny tiger beetle (about half an inch long) and amphibians (in the desert!) including the tiger salamander and the Canadian toad.  And let's not forget Ord's Kangaroo Rat.

  

We didn't see any of these critters the day we visited.  But that's not surprising.  They keep to themselves, burrowing into the sand and only coming out at night to nibble on seeds and grass, which they gather in their pouchy cheeks.  This statue is in Leader, just north of the Sand Hills and the most northerly range of the little rats.

To the south of the Sand Hills is another land form left behind by the receding glaciers - the Cypress Hills.  In scraping the prairie bare, the glaciers somehow missed the Cypress Hills, at 1468 metres the highest point of land in Canada between the Rockies and the Labrador Peninsula.  This is cattle country, a land of hills and coulees, draws and valleys - a place where you could shoot a western movie or drive a herd of yearlings to market.

Back in the 19th century, the big empty country made a perfect hiding place for outlaws on the lam from Montana, just across the hills.  Keeping the peace in the area was up to a small band of Northwest Mounted Police, the forerunner of the RCMP, under the command of Major James Morrow Walsh.

Several thousand Lakota Sioux under chief Sitting Bull were also camped around Wood Mountain near the Cypress Hills.  They'd come north after defeating Lieutenant-Colonel George Armstrong Custer and his troops at the Battle of Little Big Horn in June of 1876.  The following spring, Major Walsh offered Sitting Bull protection from the US Army if he complied with Canadian law, and asked Prime Minister John A. MacDonald to intercede with the Americans on behalf of the Sioux.  MacDonald refused.  Major Walsh was reassigned to Fort Qu'Appelle and his replacement at Fort Walsh was more amenable to the government's wishes.  In 1881 Sitting Bull was among the last of his people to be escorted to the border and handed over to US authorities.   

Fort Walsh is a National Historic Site, less than an hour's drive south of Maple Creek.  There's a place to park your trailer before you head up the switchback road to the top of the hill.

Turning south from Fort Walsh, we took Highway 615 (basically a well-kept grid road) until we could see Montana, Alberta and way in the western mists, the Rocky Mountains.  We turned east along Highway 13, the Red Coat Trail, a 1,300 km alternative to the Trans Canada Highway that runs from Alberta to Manitoba, through one of the most history-soaked parts of the country.  Much less crowded too - the traffic volume is fewer than a hundred vehicles a day in some spots.  Road trip anyone?