$250/person (minimum of 15 people)
Sunday, June 6 - Monday, June 7
Leaders: Janis Dale and Dave Sauchyn
Follow the path of First Nation's peoples and early settlers and take an excursion across space and time in the Palliser
Triangle region of southwestern Saskatchewan. This is Canada's dry vast landscape where "the deer and the antelope play".
We will travel across the vast prairie setting of moraines, sloughs and glaciolacustrine beds that support the vast fields
of wheat that make up Canada's breadbox.
We will see the Dirt and Cactus Hills that cap the Missouri Coteau, evidence of
the power of glaciers in the last glaciation advancing up the coteau to form some of the largest ice thrust moraines seen
anywhere.
From there we travel across the glacial landscape of southern Saskatchewan and see the impact of internal drainage
basins that house the saline lakes utilized by flocks of migrating geese and support the salt mining at Chaplin. We spend
an afternoon exploring sand dunes of the Great Sand Hills, the largest contiguous dune occurance in southern Canada and an
area of active oil and gas extraction. Entering ranching country we will travel through Maple Creek, home of the Cowboy
Poetry readings and gateway to the Cypress Hills, which boast the highest point of elevation east of the Rocky Mountains.
In the Cypress Hills, we will see The Gap, the conglomerate cliffs, and visit Fort Walsh, a National Historic site. We will
stay at a resort in the heart of the Cypress Hills nestled among lush stands of lodgepole pines, the only site east of the
Rockies where this tree is found. They are perhaps remnants of the Cypress Hills nunatak and whose wood holds the secrets
of past climate conditions. From there we travel south and east through the spectacular Frenchman River Valley that drains
to the Missouri River and on to the Gulf of Mexico. This part of the trip takes us through Ravenscrag and Eastend where 70
million years of history are exposed in the Cretaceous cliffs of this great valley. This is the home of 'Scotty', the largest
complete Tyrannosaurus rex skeleton yet found, and housed at the T. Rex Discovery Centre in Eastend, along with other ancient
fossil finds.