After a night sleeping in a motel with a shared bathroom in Saskatoon, I was so happy once we were in the car!!! Today was a long drive again, and we had in mind to make a stop in a Canadian National Park (yes, another one. For the one who knows me well, they know that I love nature and to discover new paths!). I was meeting one of my French colleagues (we worked together 15 years ago…so crazy that she was living in Edmonton, so it was nice to reconnect! By the way, she has this superpower to make appears bison!!!)
This park is exciting as it is on both sides of the Highway 16 or Yellowhead Highway, who goes to Edmonton!
This park was created from a vision to five men, the Beaver Hills, who held a vision, a small park protecting the forests and wildlife that still existed and might always. In 1906, these men each posted $1000 toward a bond creating Elk Park. They guaranteed to enclose 20 head of elk if the federal government would set aside and fence the land. Three years later, the park was surrounded, the elk encloser and the five men released from their bond.
The game this afternoon was to find bison or anything that resemble to an animal! But we weren’t lucky as it was I think way too early to spot them. We took this loop five times to see them; we didn’t see anything! We walked more than an hour on Moss Lake Trail, and the only thing we spotted was a ton of mosquitos (even if we had put on us some repellant!), so we had no choice to turn around! We did go to the south of the park (which is surrounded by a big fence). They have this gigantic trail where you can see the Wood Bison, so of course, we decided to give it a try just for half an hour, but once again, the mosquitos were against us.
Then we made a little walk near Astotin Lake, and we wanted to walk on the boardwalk, but it has flooded! So we just enjoyed the view there! The park is well know to be a place where you can watch to the stars without the city light! Finally, when the sun was coming down, we were able to see some bison along the road, and they really don’t care about us! It was funny to see the cars stopping and us putting our thumbs up to be sure that we were at a safe distance. For information, if you raise your thumb in front of your eyes and if the bison is more than your thumb, it’s not safe!
The sunset here was amazing!!! Another day on the road and it’s always nice to see some colleagues!
