Day 13 - Cypress Hills Interprovincial Park, Saskatchewan

It's a bit surprising when you are driving through the prairies and all of a sudden a lake seems to come up out of nowhere.  There were more of these than I would have imagined there would be along the way. 

Almost all of them had flocks of water fowl in them, like this American Coot.

Or these Green Teal ducks. 

Occasionally you would come across something interesting like an old abandoned building. I secretly hoped that when I took a picture of this I would see a ghost in the window or something. No such luck. Maybe next time. It still has some character though. 

So Saskatchewan we are giving you another chance today. We weren't so impressed with you the last time through, but here we are at Cypress Hills Interprovincial Park. Let's see what you've got. 

Well we aren't in bear country anymore. Now we have to be on the look out for Cougars! 

There were fire bans all over the west this year, with over 130 forest fires at one time in B.C. alone. Looks like Cypress Hills had a bit of a dry spell too and was keeping their newly layed sod watered with sprinklers . And keeping the guests off the grass surrounding the office  with orange tape.

The inside of the office felt like a crowded school office or something but that's OK we weren't here to see the office anyways. The table that the visitor sign in book was on was hand made and quite nice though. 

This park is quite large and spread out, so it took us a bit of a drive to get to the camp site area. Along the way we saw some deer. It was difficult to get a picture of them through the car window though and I was disappointed to find that my pictures of them turned out quite blurry. 

The more we drove around the more and more impressed I became with this place.  It was a little community, much like White Hawk Campground in Manitoba was, but this was different in that some people actually lived here and had houses along some of the road ways. It was a whole town right inside the park! As I mentioned, everything was very spread out here and you pretty much have to drive to everything. So the houses were pretty far from where the campsites were and you didn't even know they were there unless you left the campsite area and drove down to the beach. It may sound strange but the whole set up really worked very well and was far better than the White Hawk campground was. To start with it made sense that there would be snack bars here because people lived here. There was a cute little ice cream place called Dan's Little Dipper. 

There was a tiny little pizza place which seemed to be pretty popular. 

And in behind the pizza place was a little mini-putt. 

The park even had it's own gas station! 

There was much more but we didn't have time to check out everything right away. We needed to put our tents up. These were just some of the things we saw as we were driving to the camp site area. Finally we came to our campsite, number 65. 

The campsites were very large and there was plenty of space for us all on one site with room to spare. 

The trees here are very tall, much like those in BC. However, these trees are very spaced out with hardly any low growing branches or under brush which gave it a unique look compared to other campsites. It was quite pretty. 

Since there are no low growing branches it is very easy to see through the trees. Normally this might be a problem if you want privacy from the neighbouring campers. But it was no problem here because the campsites were positioned around a hill and the most you could see of the campers across the way (not including your direct neighbours to the right or left of you) was maybe the top of the roof of their RV through the trees. .

This was a squirrels paradise and you could hear them chattering happily away, above your head. Once in awhile you could make out a squirrel's nest way up high if you looked real close. 

It was so peaceful here. I loved it! You could easily hear the birds and sometimes they would come close enough to see what kind they were, like this little Nuthatch that came for a visit. 

Even the fire pit was unique. The grill could be swung away easily from the top of the fire to allow for more room for wood, and then swung back again if you wanted 

The bathrooms were tiny in that they didn't have stalls and only one person at a time could use them. (Which if you have a lot of people around could result in line ups). However, even the bathrooms were pleasantly surprising....

Not only were they flush toilets, but they were lo-flow dual flush! So you push one of two buttons on the top of the lid depending on how much water you wanted to use. I have never seen such nice flush toilets in campground bathrooms that weren't in a comfort station. This campground was classy!

Apparently they had a "dual" theme happening in the bathroom because pretty much everything came in twos in there.  

In the evening there were a couple of street lamps that would come on so that you could see your way to the bathroom. They weren't bright enough to be intrusive or bother your sleep. It was just enough so that you weren't tripping over your own feet to get to the bathroom in the middle of the night.

We spent the rest of the evening sitting around the campfire and enjoying the night sky before we headed off to bed. 

The next day we had a wee bit more time to look around the park but not as much as I would have liked. 
While we were busy packing up we were able to take a bit of time to enjoy the nature around us. My daughter found this little inchworm hanging out on my tent.  I love  inchworms. They are so interesting to watch. 

There is soooo much to do here and I could have happily spent many days here. The day before we had considered going horse back riding, but we just weren't up to it so we didn't go. 

There were nice paved paths lined with garden lights that led up to a nice little amphitheatre. 

The amphitheatre had a log cabin look to it and fit the woodsy feel. 

This place has everything.. It has a tennis court. 

It has an observatory (which we didn't see because we didn't know it was there until we were leaving).

It has zip lines!!! Again, I would have went but didn't know they were there until we had to leave. 

There was a beautiful looking pool.

Down by the pool was a little pub where you could sit out on the patio and have a drink.

The patio over looked the lake which featured a little gazebo you could go and sit in. 

They though of everything here. They even provide free doggie doo bags that are dispensed from a container mounted on the side of the wall of some of the buildings. 

There was a place to rent paddle boats and canoes.

You had to drive up the road from the pub to get to the beach.  The beach was well kept and had recently been combed. 

The beach had play structures for the little kids. 

And it had a couple of these riding , bouncy toys to sit on. 

There was this thing near by which I am presuming is an outdoor shower to wash your feet off maybe? Not quite sure what this was. 

Looking out over the lake we saw a couple of red throated loons. 

I love this park so much! It was one of my favourite parks on the whole trip! The road to the beach is one way and circles around the small lake. So we were able to see some of the houses that were along the road. Some of them were for sale. Who knows, maybe  I will come and buy a house and live here one day. A person can dream, right?