What a Butte! - Across Canada, Day 11 of 92 (plus bonus photos)

in #photofeed5 years ago

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Castle Butte, southern Saskatchewan.

After leaving Riding Mountain I drove all day, from Manitoba down through the vast, flat open prairie to Southern Saskatchewan, drawing as near a beeline for Grasslands National Park as the gridline roads of the province allowed, pausing for a few abandoned buildings and animals along the way - but I made one significant stop, at a landmark feature called Castle Butte in the Big Muddy Valley, a relative stone's throw from the US (Montana) border. This monolith would raise no eyebrows in the US southwest or as a background for John Wayne, but in Saskatchewan it's worthy of note, and though it appeared to be on private land, hidden away in a valley, it had signage for visitors and is shown on official tourism brochures.

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Some photos from the drive through Saskatchewan:

Horses and antelope!

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Many abandoned farms and ghost towns.

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And some non-abandoned industry:

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And finally, a note about driving on southern Saskatchewan roads:

Make sure your insurance covers cracked windshield before you venture here.

For whatever reason, there was a lot of loose gravel on the shoulders of the paved roads, and on a particularly pernicious stretch of road, after leaving Castle Butte, I had the most rotten luck: two out of the five cars I passed on that road kicked up rocks that hit my windshield and created large chips in nearly the exact same place on the glass (on the driver's side, directly in my vision when looking at the road). These two hits happened five minutes apart, and before the second one I was already so paranoid I had literally braked and pulled off the side of the road before the car passed, but to no avail - the gravel hit the glass and left its mark.

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In all my driving on all my adventures I had never so much as nicked a windshield, but here on this one road, within five minutes I had sustained not one but two large chips in exactly the worst place on my rental Jeep. I was not impressed. So please, be careful driving in Southern Saskatchewan.

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Nice. I would love to see a pronghorn.

Go home, home on the range!

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