Author: Andrena Teed

Campsite # 19 Thunderbird Campground, Campbell River, BC

Thunderbird Campground is on a narrow strip of land between Campbell River 11 and the Discovery Passage. It is, as commercial campgrounds always are, congested, with a variety of trailer makes and models parked in two rows. Our campsite backed onto the Campbell River 11, a tributary to the larger Campbell River just metres downstream. The campground has the usual assortment of commercial accoutrements – a laundry, extra showers, a tuck shop – but no activities in nature. It doesn’t matter because just outside the gates is a portion of the Campbell River Greenway Loop, a 28 km walking trail around the city that meanders down by Discovery Passage.

We were here to get necessary items for our home in Wuikinuxv, so this campsite offered just what we needed at this point – a pretty spot to rest at the end of the day.

We had a small green space behind the trailer where OrangePekoe, Granville, and we humans could relax in the evening. We were there in the mornings too, before we went out on our errands. We lucked in with this specific campsite.

Campsite # 20 Broughton Strait Municipal Campsite, Port McNeill, BC

This municipal campsite, at the edge of Port McNeill, was as congested as a commercial site. This is what we have come to expect of municipal campsites. We were tucked into a corner at the end of a row of campers. It was just right for us, because all four of us, the two humans, Granville the dog and OrangePekoe the cat, like a bit of space around us. This one was quite acceptable. Both animals made themselves comfortable.

Granville:

OrangePekoe:

Because we were in Port McNeill, we could go to a restaurant for an occasional meal. We did go out for a fish&chip supper one evening. The proximity of restaurants, grocery and hardware stores, and laundrettes is one of the advantages of a municipal campground.

Sixteen campgrounds in six weeks. We found something delightful about each one of them. Maybe that’s one reason why we remained smiling through it all.

British Columbia’s iconic landscapes, the ones that feature in advertisements and textbooks, are views of mountains, perhaps with water adjacent to the mountains. We discovered during our drive through this province that there are several quite distinct landscapes. Our route would take us from Kootenay through the South Central Interior to the Lower Mainland.

We hoped to see some of the province from the car windows, but we were driving along the Trans-Canada, which has a limited lateral exposure to the landscape. Essentially, when you drive along these fast roads, you are driving along a tunnel. Views to the sides might be extensive if there is an open space, but usually the route is walled with vegetation, rocks formations, rock-cuts, or a combination of those.

Lucky me, sitting on the passenger side of the vehicle provided an opportunity to glimpse some land features as we drove past. Generally I got to see the rivers as we zipped over the bridges. Unfortunately, the barricades blocked most of the view, but we all are familiar with this and can fill in the blanks in the canvas.

Power lines – that is something both driver and passenger could enjoy. That graceful swoop from one mountain top to another, sometimes glistening, in whole or part with reflected light, is an electrifying sight for Nigel. He likes to compare the different tower designs, and ponder the work required to set them in location. I like the pattern and design they create in the landscape.

Occasionally the road ran along one side of a lake, and the railway that always seems to be there ran along the other side. We were thrilled to see one of the regular train tunnels, a little arched window, leading into the depths of the mountain. In fairy tales, entrances to mountains lead to kingdoms of gold and other riches. In a sense this is the same. The train regularly enters and emerges from the mountains carrying a cargo that generates riches.

From time to time our view opened wide. At Shuswap Lake the view across the water was accented with a very long freight train waiting for its time to proceed along the tracks. Those few years living near the tracks when I was young still influence my appreciation for trains in scenes.

I like the contrast between nature and industry. Maybe I was influenced in my youth by the paintings of L.S.Lowry, the English artist, who painted industrial England at the beginning of the 1900s. We all try to avoid looking at the evidence of our industry and business, but we do enjoy the life-style that is the result.

Two examples are a cottage overlooking a lake,

and a manicured golf course.

From the Shuswap Lake to Hope is a region of incredible geographic diversity ranging from mountains to dry plateau. The economic activities were varied as well, from orchards to vineyards to ranching. We rounded a corner , and were astonished – what a surprise to see a drastic change in landscape. Farms nestled in a wide, flat valley. As a bonus the view included a familiar sight – a long train crossing the landscape.

We had now entered the Thompson-Nicola Regional District, named for the two rivers that traverse the area. The Thompson River is named in honour of David Thompson, the man who surveyed large swathes of western Canada. The Nicola River is named in honour of Chief Nicola, who was an important First Nation leader during the fur trade in British Columbia.

The Thompson River is banked with glacial silt and grit. This unstable ground often shifts, and sheets of sediment slide down into the river. The beige banks weren’t shifting when we were there, but we did see some evidence of landslides.

Surrounding the Thompson River is the Thompson Plateau. This is characterised by rolling grasslands and scrub bush. It’s one of the driest areas in British Columbia, and looking at the scenery outside the car window, this was believable. It looked arid, with stunted trees and beige grasses. To our eyes, it looked familiar, a type of landscape with which we often saw when we lived in the Kalahari Desert.

Our vicarious dance partner, the landscape, suddenly changed timbre. We topped a hill and a whole new vista lay before us. It’s still the Thompson Plateau, but in another costume. This more curvaceous, hilly country connects to the Fraser Plateau, another highland area in the central interior of British Columbia. Our route visibly wound its way up and around the mountains; a long and winding road ahead.

The steep inclines on these mountain roads meant there was danger of brakes failing and vehicles running out of control. Brakes fail on hills, not often, but often enough that there are precautions in place for drivers, especially large transport truck drivers. There were runaway truck ramps at frequent intervals along the road. These are sliproads at the side of the main road, angled for easy access, often filled with sand or gravel to help slow the truck, and often with an uphill gradient which provides gravity assistance with stopping the truck. We saw deep tracks in several of the runaway ramps but this one looked almost unruffled.

For the most part we had a well maintained, dual carriageway (divided highway) through the mountains. Contemporary highways tend to be wide and fairly even in gradient. This makes the driving easier on the driver and the vehicle, not to mention the passenger. In our vehicle, it meant discussion about road construction and commentary about how it would have been laid out. This is because Nigel worked on some major road construction projects during his surveying career. That was an added bonus. For most vehicles, at minimum, it ensures a wide view of the gorgeous scenery.

Somewhere along the route, we crossed the water divide. The creeks and streams now flowed into the mighty Fraser River. The Fraser River is the longest river in British Columbia. This wide, murky river may well take the claim for opening up the province to settlers – loggers, salmon fishers, farming, and the siren call of gold. Unfortunately, most of the route was set back from the river, and rightly so, since there is always a chance that rivers will overrun their banks and damage a road. We caught glimpses of this iconic British Columbia river over the road-side barricades.

As it meets the Pacific Ocean, the Fraser River opens into an extremely wide delta. As with all deltas, the soil, carried along and then deposited by the river, is rich in nutrients. Deltas are flat and damp. Perfect for farms, especially market gardening farms which grow those hungry plants like tomatoes, peppers, lettuces, cucumbers, and broccoli. The 50 km wide Fraser River delta did not disappoint. Prosperous looking farmland was everywhere. In the background, a beautiful backdrop – the mountains of the Pacific Coast Ranges.

Farmland is premium land. There is a limited amount of arable, flat land in British Columbia. Unfortunately, Vancouver and its neighbouring cities, are creating an urban monolith that is nibbling away at the very land that is necessary to feed all of us.

Initially the subdivisions are small holdings, 5-acres or so of land that possibly is a hobby farm with horses for pleasure and competition.

When suburbs are built on farm land, that land is lost to agriculture. This is the way of contemporary society. We are increasingly urban. We feel fortunate to have toured through the mountains and farmlands of more rural British Columbia en route to its largest urban area.

Beautiful BC – a slogan for this province for decades. It is a fitting slogan, because the province is indeed beautiful. Stunningly so. It’s an overwhelming visual experience, quite frankly. There is no pause to blink and relax; it’s one visual sensation after another. Exhausting, positively exhausting. Gloriously exhausting.

We camped for a couple of nights at Canyon Hot Springs Resort, a commercial campground in Albert Canyon, in the midst of the Selkirk Mountains. The taller of these mountains, seen from the campground, is possibly Mount Albert, from which the canyon takes its name. These mountaintops, older than the Rockies, filled every direction, looking imposingly graceful, as mountains do. It was a prelude of the scenery that was to continue through British Columbia.

You will recall that the long, silvery ribbons of the railway tracks tie Canada into a cohesive whole. During our travels, we noticed how the railway provides a crucial link across Canada. Tracks crisscross our country, providing a thousands-of-kilometres-long pattern for commerce and industry. A double-track skirted the edge of our campground; what a location to drive a train.

We heard trains all day and all night. It was sounds from my childhood, when we lived near the tracks. We went down to the level crossing at the end of the campground to watch trains, as one does.

It’s quite easy to sit for an hour or more, waiting for trains. It was almost edge-of-the-seat exciting because there were up to ten trains an hour, and some of them were very long. I’ve lost my knack for counting cars. Unfortunately the cabooses seem to have disappeared so the pleasure of waving to the caboose attendant has been erased from train watching.

Decades ago this location, Albert Canyon, was a designated train stop, a pause before the climb to Kicking Horse Pass. The rapidly flowing Albert Creek, is spanned by a basic train bridge, which is essentially some long railway ties propping up the railway track, and held in place with steel girders. A narrow vehicle bridge adjacent to the tracks gave us allowance to cross the river safely.

Safety is relative. The vehicle bridge gave the impression of being rickety, made out of some cross beams with a metal mesh on top, and barricades about as high as a street curb. In fact, it was very secure and level. Not a wobble. Not a wiggle. The mesh was a tad slippery, which required careful stepping.

I walked carefully because that raging water rushed headlong under the bridges, centimetres from my feet, en route to its junction with the Illecillewaet River. Raging, of course, because it drops from about 1700 metres height to 700 metres height, a difference of 1 kilometre, in just over 3 kilometres. A 33% gradient! I’d be raging too if I tumbled that distance.

I didn’t dare look down when I walked across the bridge. My eyes were on the horizon. Vertigo on a barracade-less bridge is not ever a desired experience.

The water speeding along close to the banks emphasised that the drop in elevation continued beyond this portion of the Albert Canyon. Granville, who likes to splash in water, had to be restrained. Once she stepped up to her knees into the glacier-fed water she seemed to realise there was sense in exercising caution around this fast-flowing, very cold creek.

This wide spot in Albert Canyon is an oasis in the midst of rough, near vertical igneous and metamorphic mountains. As befits an oasis, the campground had a lush forest on one side.

As we walked along the groomed path, all I could think about was Emily Carr, the British Columbia artist, contemporary of the Group of Seven, who painted Northwest Coast scenes. I know she did not paint in this part of British Columbia, but the woods here mirror the woods on the coast. Wood Interior (1932) is an example of one of her famous paintings that could have been painted in this place.

We came to the banks of Albert Creek from a different angle. The water was dull turquoise, still showing its glacial origins, still moving quickly, and still mesmerising to watch.

And we still had to restrain Granville from leaping in for a paddle. That current would have swept her away, eventually taking her to the Columbia River and then to the Pacific Ocean. We preferred to take her with us in the camping trailer, but it was tempting…

For my part, I gazed up and up, craning my neck and leaning back a bit, drinking in the magnificence, absorbing it, admiring it, enjoying it, overwhelmed by it. The Canadian Cordillera, the western conglomerate of mountain ranges, plateaus, and valleys, is worthy of its wide-spread exaltation. The British Columbia mountains and their side-features, the secondary characteristics like these that lend depth and gloss to the mountains, are spectacular. They are a rich and satisfying illustration of the licence plate motto “Beautiful British Columbia”.

Kicking Horse Pass spans the border between Alberta and British Columbia. Scouted and surveyed by the Palliser Expedition in 1858-1859. At that time the Yellowhead Pass was used to travel over the Rocky Mountains. The objective of the expedition and survey was to explore and map western Canada, to find areas for settlement and to counter American expansion. They were also charged with finding a less arduous and shorter route between the, then, Northwest Territory and British Columbia. This pass was built in the 1880s, initially as a conduit for the Canadian Pacific Railway, and a link from British Columbia to Canada. Because of the promise of this link, British Columbia joined Confederation in 1871.

We chose this route, in part, because of the historic significance of Kicking Horse Pass. The steep canyon walls, and the close proximity of the mountains required a unique engineering feat – spiral tunnels. These are tunnels that swirl and follow contour lines, but inside the mountains, so the train drives into an arch at one elevation and appears some time later at an arch at another elevation, seeming to cross over itself. We see this technique used in road construction these days, although the dramatic effect of crossing over our own vehicle does not happen with cars.

https://parks.canada.ca/pn-np/bc/yoho/culture/kickinghorse/visit/spirale-spiral

There is a Parks Canada Historic Site with places to pull off the road on this route. The Spiral Tunnel viewing site was jam packed with vehicles. It’s a popular sightseeing spot. The Spiral Tunnels were, and continue to be, a feat of engineering. The train tunnels were constructed over a couple of years, from 1907-1909. Typically, 25-30 trains move through the tunnels every day. That’s a lot of train traffic, indicating that for the past hundred years these spiral tunnels have been important for moving products east and west across the country. Much as these sights interest us, because it was raining and the place was crowded, we decided to make a specific trip to see the tunnels in action, so to speak, on a later date.

Just over the Kicking Horse Pass overpass, called Park Bridge, there is a combined Canada and British Columbia site. This is located approximately where a kicking horse incident happened, and for which the pass is named. Apparently some pack horses in the Palliser expedition had fallen into the river. A surveyor let his horse graze while he was helping retrieve the pack horses When he returned to his own horse, it kicked out, catching him in the chest. From then, reference was made to the Kicking Horse River. The pass was given the same name.

There is a very faded descriptive information board at the site. It leads the eye towards the high walls of the canyon, and the mountains surrounding the pass. More than a hundred and fifty years ago the terrain was the same, but transportation was more basic.

Despite the rain, we took Granville for a walk around the perimeter of the park. We needed to move around because all of us were getting stiff from sitting in the car for several hours. In this place, we were reminded about much we appreciated travelling around in a vehicle, sheltered from the rain, in relative comfort, and not worrying about ornery horses having a hizzy moment. That saunter took us to the banks of the Kicking Horse River, where we replayed in our imagination that event a century and a half ago when an annoyed horse gave the river its name.

Standing in the rain, looking back up the Kicking Horse Canyon, we were gob-smacked at the height, and grace, of Park Bridge over which we had just travelled. In the distance it’s the 400 metre long colossus standing 90 metres upright and flamboyant over the canyon floor. Our vehicle and trailer in the parking lot, look minuscule in the midst of the gigantic grandeur of these Rocky Mountains.

A recitation of Ozymandias, the poem by Percy Bysshe Shelley, seemed in order. At some point in the future it could be the subject of a similarly themed poem. For now, we stood in admiration of the phenomenal structures that surveyors, engineers, and construction teams can build.

Building the railway through this rather inhospitable geography was an unrivalled engineering feat. It was mimicked with the construction of the Trans Canada, which basically, then and now, follows the railway route, except without the extended spiral tunnels.

The road was narrow and steep, so a plan was made to widen Highway 1 from Kamloops to Banff. This has been a continuing project for many years. The engineering details and accomplishments are best explained by the experts:

https://www.tranbc.ca/2021/07/21/four-laning-bc-highway-1-your-questions-answered

We were glad to cruise along the widened Trans Canada. There was evidence along the route of some of the solutions to the challenges of constructing this road to contemporary standards, including safety for humans and animals. First, of course, to smooth the route, the road had to be cut through the mountains. Some of the rock cuts were as tall as high-rise apartments.

Fences were constructed at unusual angles to catch falling rocks, or leaping elk or mountain goats.

Delightfully wide ess-curves helped the drivers almost glide down the mountain slope. Gone are the days of roller-coaster highways, and the resultant nausea for many passengers.

A series of snowsheds added visual variety along the route. Snow sheds are concrete tunnels that might curve a bit, but they do not spiral. Their main purpose is avalanche control. They cover the sections of highway prone to avalanches. By defraying the snow, they help keep the highway open during the winter. This is an important consideration in this snowy, mountainous region.

The slope, approximately 5%, extended for several kilometres before it levelled out. Many times a vehicle, especially a truck, could get going too fast, so efficient, effective brakes were required. Good drivers regularly check their brake and at regular intervals spaces were provided for that task.

Almost always there was a transport truck parked in the brake check area, just cooling the brakes before continuing down the incline. We were impressed at the obvious participation in this safety measure. Of course, drivers are safety conscious, and do not want to experience a run-away truck on these steep hills.

Our route was a fairly steady downhill drive after Kicking Horse Pass. We had followed an historic route as much as possible. The modern upgrades to the highway infrastructure did substantially modify the original route, making it a much more amenable drive. The dramatic mountain-scape was spectacular, as spectacular as it would have been a century and a half ago when Palliser’s expedition first explored the route through the Rocky Mountains. We were glad to have a contemporary road, and not have to hack our way through the wilderness like the early expeditions and surveyors did. Smooth roads is modernisation that we all appreciate.

We travelled quickly through Alberta. We had hoped to make a couple of stops visiting family and friends, but our various schedules did not match, so we completed this portion of the trip at a fast clip.

It was just fine, because initially we found what seemed a bleak and barren land. There was grassland, with dismally dry, rather unkempt fields dominating the landscape.

Colours were bleached by the sun, faded so they barely tinted the fields. It was a beige land. A similarly colourless train was barely discernible from the grasses.

In the midst of this dull landscape there were highlights. Farm ponds were everywhere, and they seemed bigger, surrounded with greener grasses than the ones seen previously. This was a lovely sight because Alberta is a cattle-ranching province, and these grasslands are where the bovine herds are raised.

Water is essential for healthy cows. If it is as easily available as the many farm ponds seems to indicate, then these grasslands are swaying with riches. The herds we saw were chunky and sleek, looking very healthy. Eating grasses and drinking cool water as they ambled around the ranch is what has given Alberta beef its fine reputation.

Winter preparations were underway to ensure the continuing production of fine beef. Stacks of hay bales as high as an apartment building waited for transportation to the barns. This would supplement the commercial food provided for the cattle when snow prevented them from grazing in the fields.

We played a driving game – ‘spot the highlight’ in the landscape. Sometimes it was horses, not cows, that roamed the fields. That fit with another Alberta stereotype, that every ranch kept a herd of horses for work and pleasure.

Well tended farm buildings were surrounded by a ring of trees. Very often they were classic tin construction, like tin nissen huts, and squat silos. A little bit different, but certainly indicative of care, attention, and wealth.

That care and attention was necessary to ensure that another Alberta agriculture product, wheat, got what it needed to grow in these dry grasslands. Many fields had pivot irrigation systems, working on regulators to ensure equitable and timely distribution of water.

We paused at Tillebrook Provincial Park, about a third of the way across the province. It had been a long day of driving. We turned off the road into a small oasis of green. The trees and grass of Tillebrook provided a welcome relief from the beige and muted green fields.

For one night we revelled in the cool prettiness of Tillebrook. Then it was back to the straight road and the beige landscape. That straight road was a blessing for the driver – wide and smooth, easy to drive the long distances we were travelling on these two days.

We continued our ‘spot the highlight’ game. What did we see? Colourful, comic relief. A brightly decorated train sat on the track at the edge of a pale yellow wheat field.

Some oil rigs in a field indicated Alberta’s most well-known product – oil and gas. It seems that the province has a unique geological base that has provided vast oil and gas reserves. The province sits on the Western Canadian Sedimentary Basin which contains deposits of this ‘liquid gold’. Sedimentary basins are made from layers of mud at the edges and under the water of oceans, lakes and rivers. Millions of years ago, plants grew abundantly. When they died, they fell into the mud, decomposed, and under pressure become oil and gas. This is one main source of Alberta’s wealth.

The province has bountiful solar panel farms, harvesting energy from the sun with the ease that it harvests oil, gas, grain and cattle. Oil and gas reserves fill the province’s geological cellar, but there is foresight and application of solutions to using other sources for energy production on the main landscape – wind and solar power were evident on the platform.

At frequent intervals, we noticed banks of powerlines. The industries need high voltage electricity, and the province ensures that it is transported efficiently across the province. Nigel, who had spent several years and hundreds of kilometres surveying powerlines similar to these, enjoyed spotting them and reminiscing about his survey days.

Then, quite suddenly we were noticing relief. There were undulations, and rolling hills in the landscape. Colours were deepening, becoming more prominent.

Within kilometres there was noticeable tall vegetation. The almost treeless landscape transformed into large groves of trees. We reckoned we’d see mountains soon.

First, though, we had to get around Calgary. Thankfully, a bypass has been built around the city. Unaccustomed as we are to driving in a large city, we breathed a sigh of relief. Bypasses have wide views, so when we rounded a bend at the north-west corner of Calgary, we caught sight of the Rocky Mountains. They were in the distance, but they filled the horizon. What a sight!

As we got closer, the details in the mountains came into sharp relief. The bare rocky sides of the mountains seemed soul-less, rocky chunks of Earth thrown up in a fit of pique. Nearly 80 million years ago the tectonic plates collided. The pressure and heat caused the Earth’s crust to buckle, bend and fold, pushing up the Rocky Mountains. The glaciers of the ice age sculpted the peaks and valleys creating the marred and craggy features with which we are familiar.

All the geological and glacial grumbling created the iconic Canadian Rocky Mountains that we saw as we drove along this portion of the Trans-Canada Highway.

Wildlife is a concern – for conservation and for driving safety. Special wildlife overpasses have been built over the highway. This gives the animals safe passage, and helps reduce the number of animal-vehicle collisions. We give the overpasses the credit for keeping the animals invisible to us as we drove along this wild-life corridor. Not a single sighting of an animal.

We did spot plenty of geographic sights. Glaciers carved these mountains. The glacial melt-water continuously refills large lakes and raging rivers, sometimes green, sometimes aqua, and sometimes nearly indigo blue. It all contributes to an idyllic vista of the Rockies.

Somehow, in the midst of it all, industry finds a way to be in the scene. The Lafarge Cement Factory sits on Lac des Arcs, at Exshaw. It has been there since 1906. Apparently there have been some disputes about the environmental impact of the company, but there it sits, providing work, and doing its best to meet the required standards of good stewardship.

As happens with mountains, the weather changed as we climbed up through the Kicking Horse Pass. Thankfully, it was summer, so the precipitation was rain. Rain, although problematic, is much easier to deal with than snow. You might hydroplane, if you are careless, but you don’t get stuck in a snowbank or lose the road in a blizzard.

Kicking Horse Pass crosses the Continental Divide, meaning that the water on the west side of the pass flows towards the Pacific Ocean, and the water on the east side of the pass flows towards Hudson Bay or the Gulf of Mexico. The highest point is at 1 627 metres, which is not so very high, considering that many of the Canadian Rocky points are 2 500 to 3 500 metres high.

The Pass was given this unusual name because one of the members of the exploratory expedition was kicked by his horse in this area. There is a commemorative plaque in the large rest area just after the long bridge spanning the Kicking Horse River.

That’s our well travelled vehicle and trailer in the parking lot.

From there it was a downhill road through the remainder of the pass towards British Columbia. Less stressful on the vehicle, but still stressful on the driver.

Alberta was a province of contrasts from dry grasslands to wet mountain roads, from oil rigs to solar farms, from cows and horses to cement factories. At a roadside stop, we picked a Wild Rose, the official flower of Alberta. It kept us company across the province, symbolically including us in the wild beauty of Alberta.

The road to a friend always creates a light-some, positive atmosphere in the vehicle. A smile hovered around serious-driver Nigel’s mouth. He, and I, were enjoying the scenery – the brightly coloured fields of grain, the magnificently expansive sky, the view to a horizon kilometres away – which, possibly because we were driving to visit a friend from Botswana days, brought to mind aspects of the wide landscapes of areas of southern Africa. It’s not the same, of course not, but there are similarities.

We were almost relaxed driving on the smooth, wide Trans-Canada highway. Swathes of Canada to the left of us, much more of Canada to the right, and kilometres of Canada in front. It’s a huge country. By driving across it, we were increasingly aware of the size of Canada. It’s the second largest country in the world. We were very glad to have a wide road, even if from time to time construction reduced it to a single lane.

We turned off the Trans-Canada onto Highway 35, a secondary highway oriented north-south. This would take us to our destination. The road passed through a small town, Qu’Appelle. We were amused with the residual advertisement on the Red & White store wall. The faded paint from days of past glory seems an apt metaphor in what seems to be a declining town.

Just a few kilometres further north we were in for a visual surprise. The now familiar flat fields

suddenly broke open into a wide coulee, a dry ravine created by meltwater carving into the land after the last Ice Age, about 14 000 years ago.

It’s a round-edged ravine, breathtaking because it was unexpected, and dramatic because of its width and depth. This landscape has texture, a linen tablecloth lying draped over the Prairies.

At the u-shaped floor of the ravine we crossed the Qu’Appelle River, surprisingly narrow at this bridge. Nearby, the river opens into lakes, remnants of remaining indentations from the pressure of the glaciers during the Ice Age, and Glacial Lake Regina, the post glacial-era lake that filled much of the watershed.

The effect of that glaciation and meltwater can be found in geological formations from Lake Diefenbaker and Last Mountain Lake in the west to the Manitoba border, 430 kilometres to the east, where the Qu’appelle River joins the Assiniboine River.

Climbing up out of the valley, the effect left by glacial erosion and deposition was noticeable as rippled, undulating hills. Cows love this type of landscape, because they can lie down and watch the world go by, or tuck themselves into one of the hollows to avoid the wind.

A quick by-pass, and a double take. Those were bison grazing in that field just up the road from the cows. Bison join cows in the Bovidae family, and can cross breed. We speculated whether these handsome creatures were being farmed and fed to breed with the cows down the road. Sort of like the boys school and the girls school at opposite ends of the town – never the twain shall meet except at those opportune moments like the debs ball, or in Bovidae parlance, the cattle pen.

Chris was just up the road from the bovine alley. We turned into his long, tree-lined driveway with a sense of relief; turning into a quiet place, ready for some rest and relaxation with a friend from ages ago.

Chris gave us a tour of the domestic yard. His backyard revealed a colourful quilt of grain fields. This farmer grows canola, wheat, and chickpeas. As Chris explained, it is best to grow a variety of grains and pulses because the unpredictable weather might damage one crop reducing its yield, but not necessarily all of the crops. Hectares of variety lay before us.

Water for the house comes from a pond in the yard. This is field-drained water. Wildlife like fox, deer, and raccoons, share the water with the house. There is a basic filter at the house ensuring that the water is useable for washing, but not for drinking. Apparently many farms have a similar system, which is why there are watering ponds dotted around the farms.

Tour over, the two friends did what Africans do – they had a braai. That entailed preparing some meat, watching the coals get hot, talking a lot, having a beer or three, and talking some more. Chris’s patio was the perfect spot for all this activity.

After some time, the coals were ready, and the chicken was put on the braai. I think peri-peri or an equivalent was used to flavour the chicken. Hot and spicy for the men. Milder flavouring for me.

Chris, a former restaurateur, had prepared a hearty meal for us. We required a brief post dinner perambulation around the side yard. The various outhouses and their previous functions were explained, and examined. Like on most farms, there was storage space, a hen house, a wood shed, a work shop, and a couple of buildings that might have been used for tending babies or sickly animals.

Granville, being the scamp that she is, roamed and roved through the yard, on guard against the squirrels and raccoons. Just like at home. She was in her element.

By tomorrow, the men had settled into the way of friends. They worked on Chris’ vehicle, sorting out a brake issue while gabbing about people and places and plans.

That left me to go out taking snapshots of the yard sculptures, those intriguing hunks of metal and machinery that so often decorate a farm yard. They had a use once, and with refurbishment could have a use again.

For now, like grotesque gargoyles, they stand around the yard slowly disintegrating as they succumb to the effects of weathering and neglect.

The area surrounding Chris’ home was an enticing mystery for humans and for Granville. She was out bouncing through the fields, finding animal paths to follow, and getting lost in the tall grains. Accustomed to running free in the yard in Smiths’ Cove, it was a welcome relief, I’m sure, from car confinement and leash restraint.

For us, this expanse of space, the rich colours, the vibrant sky, and the lovely reunion with a long-time friend gave us exactly the rest and relaxation we needed at this point. It also provided us with a down-right impressive and positive perspective on Saskatchewan. This is an often overlooked gem of a province.