At the park in Billings we saw a lovely class B that Jim and Tammie had been looking at earlier this year…camped right beside us. We listened to the little problems the owners had and thought about our little problems at the beginning – not so bad.
We left for the long drive to the border and an uneventful crossing. I still get nervous every time crossing international borders. This one was pretty good. It seemed that we were the only car on the road for hundreds of miles…even when we stopped for lunch only about three cars passed us on the road and one even stopped and asked if we were in need of assistance…how kind.
Our destination was Grasslands National Park, West Block…
We stopped in a town called Val Marie, hoping that they would have food, but everything was closed; we’d have to return the next day.
The drive into the park was about thirty kilometres of soft gravel and we saw bison and black tailed prairie dogs
and some spectacular scenery that we would get to explore in the next few days.
Shadows of a selfie…
The Will James homestead.
Grasslands National Park West block has horse stalls for equestrian adventures…great facilities.
We found more red chairs.
This is the view from the red chairs … we loved that lone tree.
Just more of what’s interesting in the prairie….
We did the suggested “Eco-drive” and saw some interesting sights and did exploratory hikes of places we will want to hike in the future. We saw the “Will James’” homestead and teepee rings.
Another view of the homestead.
Linda at the teepee ring overlooking a beautiful valley.
Lots to see and also found lots of other hikes to do…next time. One of the other campers told us about how different the East block was so we decided to go there the next day.
The drive over was longer than expected…almost 150km with us looking for fuel. For some reason getting fuel in the prairies is more difficult if a person is off the main highways.
We found that we were the only ones in the area with electricity. There were a few campers in the tent area. Great staff told us about the hiking in the area, including hoodoos, quicksand and a nice drive to a viewpoint.
This is from an interesting spider that waits for unsuspecting prey to walk into this hole..
We saw a few of these…I wonder where the rest of the skeleton was.
Linda at the quicksand.
I think it’s a Sharp-tailed grouse.
At the entrance to one of the hiking trails…the above is a petrified tree trunk.
Linda.
One of the hoodoos I climbed…the little white thing above is what’s close up below.
Coyote poop…almost all fur this time.
Even Puck is now comfortable outside.
Leaving to parts unknown we passed through the town of Rock Glen where this iron mammoth named Oliver was outside the defunct train station. There was also an inexpensive campground on the other side…we had a lot more travelling to to accomplish.
We ended up at Moose Mountain Provincial Park….just a couple of days with a nice bike ride…very much like Ontario parks. Strange, neither of us too many photos there… and off we went towards Ontario…next…maybe not…
What an amazing summer you have had. Its like a lifetime of memories in one summer 😎