20 August 2016, Saturday

Our tent is quite soggy this morning with several slugs on the outside wall and two in my shoes. Ugh!! I wipe down the outside of the tent as best I can and flick the slugs from my Ahnu’s. We depart Moon Lake and drive down to Wasagaming. Along the way we pass one moose and several deer.

After breakfast at Whitehouse Bakery we fill Jazz with gas, buy some grapes for car munchies and we are on the road.

Before very long we cross into Saskatchewan, “land of living skies” and also into the mountain time zone. The land is very green, mostly with crops and a few scattered trees. The road is straight, undulating up and down gently with the rise and fall of the land. On flat sections the land seems to go on forever. On the gentle rises all we can see is the sky ahead. We seem to be driving into the clouds. We do not find the drive boring at all.

We catch up by phone with G as we continue towards Regina for a late lunch at Bushwakker Brew Pub. The beers are great. O orders a ‘small’ plate of nachos after commenting to our waitress on the towering mound of nachos she delivered to another table and finding out that was a medium. After lunch we continue westward to Swift Current and then turn south. Another 105 km to go out of a total of 820 for the day. The landscape becomes more brown with sharper rises and falls as we proceed southward. On our right are vast golden fields of what we believe to be barley. At one point we startle three mule deer and they go bounding into the field, their heads appearing and disappearing among the rows as they run.

We finally arrive at Val Marie where the Grasslands National Park visitor center is located. We stop to check in but the center is closed. We pick up brochures and find we have another 20 km to go to get to the campground. The drive in is beautiful as the sun is setting. We are tempted to stop and watch the bison and prairie dogs but we push ahead so we can set up our tent before it is entirely dark.

We find site 17 and take out our still soggy tent. There are a few unfortunate slugs still attached. We do not think they will survive very long out here. In one day’s drive we have gone from checking shoes for slugs to checking for snakes and scorpions.