I have a shocking confession. I hate summer! Especially July! I know that’s an incredibly strange thing to say but it’s a time of year that’s just awful for me. As far as I can tell, the people who claim to love the heat are those who have air conditioning at home, work, and in their cars so I’m sure getting out for a few minutes in the heat must be lovely for them. For the rest of us, it sucks! You get sweaty and sticky just walking to your car, mosquitoes are everywhere in the evening, and the light and heat are big migraine triggers for some of us. I’ve learned this year that I’m not alone in hating the heat which makes me feel much better about this confession as I’m sure some who are reading this are feeling much the same. Despite all this, I did something weird and out of character this July: I decided to face the heat and the crowds and go camping again! After all, there was another star party and another Grasslands park to check out so I thought, ‘Why not?’

As I write that, I can’t help but laugh because this was another one of those trips that didn’t exactly start off with a bang. Actually, it started with several bangs but I’ll get to that in a moment. I admit that I find it quite odd that the visitor centre for the park isn’t actually in the park but quite a distance away. After paying for my site, I drove maybe 20km before reaching a herd of cows who seemed to be guarding the park gate. Once in the park, you quickly have to reduce your speed to 30km/h which I thought was insanely odd until I realized that I was driving through a prairie dog town. Do you have any idea how hard it is to drive and critter watch at the same time?! Driving a little further, I saw a black dot in the distance that really didn’t seem to belong there. As the road brought me closer, I realized that this dot was, in fact, a lone male bison wandering around the prairie. I hadn’t even reached the campground and I had already seen so much! So exciting!

To call the campground ‘underwhelming’ would be an understatement. In fact, that wasn’t even my word but the description of the campground given by another camper. One of his friends then replied, “I feel like I’m out at Craven but at least then, I’d get a concert too!” The grounds are best described as just an empty field in a small valley. The shelter house called Belza had power, Wifi, a barbeque, and a pop machine. On one side was the campground which was mostly empty all weekend but online was completely booked. The oTentiks were over there too but frustratingly seemed more sheltered than any other spot. The other side of the grounds was a big open field for over flow. No trees, no wind breaks, just a field. I found out very quickly how ridiculous this set up was.

My first evening started off nicely. I set up my campground and made my dinner. I wandered around a little but after a chaotic morning of packing and the 4 1/2 hour drive, it was nice just to watch the sunset. As I contemplated setting up my telescope, clouds began forming on the western horizon. And they got bigger and bigger and darker and darker. But I quickly realized that we would be on the edge of this in coming storm and felt better. After last year’s nightmare at Sask Landing, I was happy to know that I wouldn’t be rained on. Instead, something worse happened. As the storm grew and came closer, I could see a lot of lightning. I’ve never tried photographing lightning before but with so much of it crashing around, I thought I’d grab my camera and try anyway. But as I sat trying to capture the amazing power of nature, another force came my way: wind. Even though we were on the edge of the storm, the winds were out of control. And this is the point that I discovered that my tent does not do well in high winds. When I looked behind me, my tent was flat. My heart sank and several swear words popped into my head. Turned out that it was just the gusts that would be a problem as the tent eventually perked back up but it was a very scary prospect. Do I hide in my tent and risk getting whisked in the head by a pole as I slept or do I sleep in the SUV and risk my tent blowing away? I threw my expensive camera into the trunk, jumped into my tent, and laid down with my arms over my face. I quickly had to jump back out though when my camp table went crashing into my tent. Quite a start to my trip! I was lucky though. Others had broken poles and ripped tents to deal with so I know it could have been worse.

The next morning, I did my best to make breakfast. It was no longer stormy windy but rather the usual prairie windy which still too much wind and the reason why I’m so surprised at the poor set up of the campground. Anyway, I had read that this block of Grasslands had kayaking which surprised me a little since Frenchman Valley River looks pretty wimpy on a map but I was assured that it is indeed a spot for paddling. Well, I’m sure that’s normally true. Unfortunately, the area has been hit by the worst drought in 100 years which made the river about 2 – 3 feet lower than it should have been. Shortly after launching from an ‘unmarked but apparently official if you look at the map’ area, I quickly began bottoming out on rocks in the river bed. Getting past that, I soon after I hit a portage. The problem though is that there was no actual way to go over it as I couldn’t paddle close enough to get out of my kayak. I assumed that if I had that amount of trouble getting to that point, who knows what awaited me further upstream so just went back and forth a bit making laps in that small section and learning the best route around the hazards. Because it’s not a wide river and it’s carved deep into a little valley, it’s actually a cozy place to paddle but one can only do so many short back and forths and I packed it in for the morning. I was later told of an area about an hour away that’s lovely for kayaking but unfortunately, I didn’t get a chance to check it out. Either way, the potential for an amazing paddle is definitely something worth going back for.

Since my morning activity didn’t take as long as I expected, I decided to head back up the road and spend more time with the prairie dogs. Another lone bison in the distance seemed unconcerned with all the tourists watching the cute, twitchy rodents from the side of the road. A short trail takes you through the prairie dog village to the valley edge where the wind that was seriously picking up again almost blew me away. But as beautiful as it was to just sit down and take in the scenery, I couldn’t stop taking pictures of the prairie dogs. These Black-tailed Prairie Dogs are apparently the only ones of their species still living in their natural habitat in Canada which made it really special to see. I don’t think they appreciated it much though. It’s quite comical to watch them as they call their warnings to the town as their fat little bellies twitch with each sound.

I’ve already mentioned the bison but driving the Ecotour Drive in the afternoon gave me the chance to get a taste of what the Great Plains would have looked like a few hundred years ago. Seeing a lone bachelor is cool but a whole herd of Plains Bison is quite a sight! Absent for the past 120 years, these herds were reintroduced to the area in 2005 and I’m thankful to have the opportunity to see it so close to home. As for the Ecotour Drive itself, it probably would have been best if I just turned around as soon as I hit the signs telling me that I was leaving the park. Lovely farm land but not lovely enough to spend an hour driving for nothing. The park itself has more than enough beautiful views to make the drive a so-so experience. (I should point out that along the drive, there are various points to stop and hike around a bit. The visitor centre has a guide book to help you understand these spots and I highly recommend it. Just don’t bother leaving the park itself. Especially as one particular sign on the drive outside park grounds is easy to miss and like me, you will likely get lost.)

The heat and wind did a number on me that first full day and I found myself having to have a long, medicated nap. The evening came and so did the Park Canada people laden with marshmallows, chocolate, and graham crackers. Any park/campground that feeds me s’mores is automatically in my good books! As anti-social as I like to be, I find these times at the campground an interesting event. It’s a chance to talk to other people and find out where they’re from, why they came, and where else they’re going on their travels. I think I already wrote this in my post about the East Block but there really is something so comforting about huddling around a fire, sharing food and stories. It’s something so burned into our core being that even a curmudgeon like me feels happy being there.

Of course, my real reason for being at Grasslands was the sky and this time, there was no disappointment! Okay, maybe a little. When you’re used to washed out, light polluted skies, it’s not hard to figure out constellations as you can only see major stars. When you’re in darkness though, you’re so surrounded by stars that you have no idea where to start! Not the best idea for someone still trying to get back into the hobby. Some Regina members had joined me by that time and I was able to spend time learning more about telescopes and stargazing from them. I tried a few pictures of the sky that night as well but something wasn’t working right. More on that in a moment. Despite my frustrations (we also had some lighting issues which really shouldn’t have existed in a dark sky preserve), a cool, calm night surrounded by stars is truly a beautiful experience.

I decided not to over do things the next day. The wind and heat came back with a vengeance but there was really nowhere to hide unless I spent the day in the shelter with other people. I’m very thankful that one of the Regina members had a trailer with an awning I could hide under but that really shouldn’t have been necessary with a good campground set up. I did spend a little time in the late afternoon exploring the grounds again before another night of stargazing. As this was an official event from the Royal Astronomical Society, the park set up a night for the public first with talks then with stargazing. I’m still too green for these kinds of nights but I do remember my time as a events coordinator for the Saskatoon centre back in the day and it was always fun listening to people’s comments. I forgot how funny it is to hear, “That doesn’t look real!” when seeing Saturn even though I always think the same thing when I see it through my telescope. It’s humbling to be able to show people the universe. That evening, I tried looking for some old friends again like Saturn and Jupiter as well as the Andromeda galaxy (M31) and the Whirlpool galaxy (M51). That night was a wonderful reminder of how much I miss my old 12″ Dobsonian (a beast but still easy to point and look at anything and everything) but I’m learning to handle an equatorial mount little by little. I also got the camera out again and for the third night in a row, I was a twit. When shooting at night, one must turn auto focus off and rely on manual focus which sounds easier than it really is as auto focus lenses don’t have dials to tell you the distance at which you’re focusing at and of course, it’s really hard to see your mistake until you get the photo onto a computer. I managed to grab a couple photos that captured the night.

The next morning, I woke up early, despite having gone to bed late and quickly ate, packed up, and hit the road. I had some very positive experiences on this trip that I’m so grateful for and while I wouldn’t say I had any very negative experiences, I am slightly disappointed. Firstly, this dark sky preserve needs work. Too many bright lights! And what’s worse is that campers are not being educated about it either. We had a lot of trouble with people leaving lights on on their campers for the night and flashing headlights at us while we observed. This is very shameful and I’m disappointed that Parks Canada is advertising ‘the darkest skies in Canada’ yet allowing a lot of behaviour that compromises the skies. Especially with the wildlife being such a draw for the park, there needs to be more sensitivity towards cutting out light pollution. As I mentioned before, the grounds themselves were also an incredible letdown and desperately need to be redone. As it stands, West Block is a place you visit to say you’ve been there but not really a place you’d bother going back to without a specific reason and that’s also a shame. If I got to choose my own spot there to pitch a tent in the campground, I certainly wouldn’t choose a super open area in the middle of nowhere. But you’re stuck there to keep you from the bison. Personally though, I think I might have been safer with the bison than the heat and wind! No pictures but of this but I was severely burned even with sunscreen! On my own end, I still have a lot of work to do on learning to use my camera. Scenery is easy, people are easy, but low light is something different for me and something I’d like to do more of. I also need to get my telescope out more often to get the hang of using it as well as getting my eyes back into stargazing. All in all, I’m happy I went and look forward to going to next year’s star party…possibly with a better tent and extra supplies like batteries and charging cables that work.

One final thing I want to mention comes from a conversation I had with one of the Parks Canada people. Her and her family had come from South Africa 3 years ago and were excited to have just gotten their Permanent Resident cards as it means that they can travel the country a bit more now. She said to me at one point that she really admires Canadians because with our seasons being so short, when the right weather comes, we’re all out enjoying ourselves doing activities we love. It’s funny because I’ve never realised that people in other countries don’t just go out and do things. But I suppose that what it’s really about: just try to enjoy things while they last. If only I get more people out snowshoeing with me in the winter then we could start calling ourselves real Canadians!