The Road Less Travelled

Tuesday, June 19th – Chester, Montana to Val Marie, Saskatchewan - Day 142 

 We woke up in a municipal park in Chester, Montana. The park welcomes camping; the RV that had been beside us the night before was already gone. The kids got dressed and went to play on the play structure. I made pancakes to take advantage of our two remaining eggs and the maple syrup Gen had bought as a special purchase. 

 We were leaving America for the (most likely) last time to head to Grasslands National Park near the Saskatchewan-US border. The 3-hour drive was uneventful other than a stop for gas and a snack at McDonalds. We pulled up to the border near Climax and we were the first and only people in line. A quick chat and some time filling in the ArriveCAN form and we were through. Four border crossings and thankfully no one has searched our trailer. 

We followed google maps towards Grasslands National Park, it directed us onto a dirt road, which was fine - the real Saskatchewan experience, but we had questions when it directed us to go down a road that was covered in grass. Grasslands National Park, we suspected, was not that intense. A quick re-route and we arrived in the town of Val Marie, home of Stanley Cup Champion Brian Trottier. We found the visitor centre to get Explorer books, dog tags and suggestions on what to do. Upon hearing about a steep, gravel covered hill in the park, we decided to stay in the campground in town. 

 We setup the trailer in the campground and with a quick look at the local supermarket (expensive) and restaurant (not so expensive), we were off to Grasslands National Park. We expected Grasslands to be flat, but the bulk of the park was in a river valley with some buttes lurking in the distance. We stopped at the entrance for a quick walk to the valley ridge. The only sound was the wind whipping across the landscape; it was very peaceful. I was at peace with the world before Charlotte who had my phone for an unknown reason, dropped it, smashing the screen such that only a fifth of the screen was visible. Peace was broken. 

Our next stop was in a community of black tailed prairie dogs. Everywhere you looked were mounds with these small creatures standing at attention. They needed to be aware because a few hundred metres away we saw a coyote loping across the landscape. The prairie dogs had a small bark that you heard coming from every direction that provided background noise for our walk. 

We drove through the valley looking for wildlife. We spotted a deer in the distance and stopped to look through our binoculars. The great thing about a grassland is there are limited places to hide, and you can see far into the distance. We spotted a snake slithering across the road but when we got closer it was gone. We had been warned about rattlesnakes, so we were tentative when looking. 

Further down the road, I spotted a black mound in the distance which turned out to be a bison sunning itself on the ground. We stopped at an old homestead, that was collapsing, to read about the challenges early settlers faced living in the prairies. There was a wooden stand with a bull head attached with which the kids could practice their roping. The mosquitoes were getting bad, so we pushed on. Just down the road, Gen spotted two more Bison walking in the distance. 

 Our final stop was to see Tipi rings, one piece of evidence of the thousands of years Indigenous people travelled through this landscape following the herds of plains Bison. The herds of plains Bison numbered around 30 million before European settlers arrived and were then reduced to a few hundred by the 1880’s. Luckily, some Montana ranchers gathered the last bison up and put them on a ranch to save them from extinction. Throughout the park there are thousands of archeological sites showing evidence of the pre-contact way of life for the Atsina, Nakoda, Nehiyawak, Siksika, Dakota and Lakota people. 

We left the park to return to Val Marie. We stopped by the lone restaurant in town for dinner. When we were ordering drinks, John tipped back on his chair and one leg of the chair hit our server in the foot. We felt terribly and she was hobbling around for the rest of the evening. The food was delicious. Afterwards we returned to our campsite for hot showers and the bedtime routine.