Day 32 Cypress Hills Interprovincial Park

Today was a quiet day in the campground. I was up before everyone, as usual, but today I decided to get outside and go for a hike on my own before the sleepyheads were even awake. The early morning is a beautiful, quiet time in the woods. Though this morning, between the woodpecker and the moose bellowing, I am not sure why no one else was yet awake. Despite their obvious presence, there were no sightings, so I just wandered the campground and enjoyed the solitude. This park is very big and has many amenities. The playgrounds are just one example. They are spacious, cleverly built and blend well into the forest atmosphere. I believe spaces like this encourage kids’ imagination and it makes me so happy to see these spaces move from the traditional swing set.

A climbing wall, and a slide built into the landscape.

Hiking paths radiate out from the main play area and all lead back to the centre.
That let's kids "hike on their own"!

Logs secured in a pile for climbing and balancing.

More walkways and pathways for exploring

Some trails put in little people assists for elevation

A tree house at the top of one of the trails had great views

The campers just up from us have four girls who sleep on top in the tent on the roof. Parents sleep in the off-road trailer, and the back of the trailer opens to a large outdoor kitchen. I have never seen one before - pretty cool!

After a lovely outdoor breakfast, we set out to become better oriented with the park. It really is a lovely park, but their maps are dreadful, and their road signs not much better. We are pretty good about finding our way in new places, and to be fair there is no fear of getting terribly lost here, but a good bit of time is wasted sorting out just where you are going and how you’re going to get there! That said, after locating a few things we were interested in, we came back to the trailers and set out on foot for a hike. There are beautiful, well-groomed trails but navigating with any amount of certainty is difficult. No matter, we had a lovely wander and came back mid-afternoon when the day was at it’s hottest!

I have started to see more of these as we wander. In the mustard family, they are wild penny cress.

The dark spots are the little seeds that can actually be made into a "peppery mustard".

Beautiful forest trails

They seem to weave in and around one another. Without a useful map I suspect we may be missing a lot.

Deer are everywhere. They don't seem to be at all skittish.
They simply pause and watch us until we move on. 

Bluebell Bellflowers

The Observatory location confirmed for a visit when the sun goes down

There are solar path lights in many locations for dusk/night hiking

Some kind of a very big moth taking a break

After supper there was another musical artist performing in the amphitheatre and we wandered over the enjoy the show. Tonight, the memorable number was a song by Kacey Musgraves called My House. It’s a country song about living the RV life on an open road, so it appealed for obvious reasons.

Following the show and presented with a clear night sky we decided to check out the Observatory at the Dark Sky Preserve here. What a great night for stars! The young people staffing the Observatory were passionate and knowledgeable. There were two telescopes in the field, and one massive telescope in the observatory. Everyone seemed to head to the observatory first, so we hung back and hung out in the field. By the time we climbed the stairs for our turn, we were the only people up there. The young man who operated the telescope was very happy to tailor his presentation to our interests and as soon he realized our interest, he brought out his personal cell phone to share his recent astrophotography. The is a student at University of Regina. They don’t offer an Astronomy Program, so he is studying Educational Science. His passion is astronomy though and he recently purchased his third telescope giving him the ability to take incredible pictures. His enthusiasm was so evident that the more we showed interest the faster he spoke until it was sometimes difficult to understand what he was telling us. He had pictures of nebulas and planets, galaxies and globular clusters, stars (including the sun and moon with the space station evident in each) and auroras, everything in incredible detail! Since we were alone with him and only had to wait for one another to look through the Celestron Ultima telescope, he would then recalibrate it as the dome above us shifted to expose another section of night sky and another heavenly view. A mostly private trip through the stars for us tonight!

The observatory open for viewing.

Cool picture (I think) of the observatory set against a stary sky.

Just fantastic views of the heavens. Even if the moon is vying for attention.

That's the glow that appears in the lower sky.