Goodbye, Land of Living Skies!

From Prince Albert we went northwest to Meadow Lake Provincial Park, where we stayed at a site really close to a nice beach. After dinner there we went on a 6 km hike around Kimball Lake, and apparently we were the first to do so in a long while. It was super overgrown and a few times we just made up where to go, and we got a Great Blue Heron really mad ... almost half a dozen times we accidentally snuck up on it, and it "yelled" and screeched angrily at us from high up in the trees, only to fly away in the direction we were walking. Also, exactly halfway around the lake, we heard something loud that sounded like a child screaming, and then something running through the trees and bushes on our left (between us and the lake). When the noises stopped, Chris checked it out with his binoculars, and it turned out to be a baby deer who was so frightened of us that he ran around and then jumped in the lake! By the time Chris saw him, he was about a quarter of the way across the kilometre-long swim he had committed to. His mom burst out of the trees nearby and we think she went around to meet him. We felt so bad, but we kept our eye on him as we hiked and it looked like he made it across. We also saw some huge footprints in the sand of the trail ... they were about three quarters of the size of Katie's feet (although that's not saying that much!), and when we did a little research we figured out that they were most likely cougar or lynx.
We went south the next morning to Saskatchewan Landing Provincial Park, which was surrounded by rolling hills. We did a really cool hike through the hills and saw areas where early settlers had set up there homes in the late 1800's, and our presence scared a herd of cows into running away -- it turns out it's pretty hilarious to watch cows run.
We spent two days there, because we had to wait out the reconstruction of the Trans Canada Highway after the incredible amounts of flooding in that area broke a dam and overflowed the highway. After the pipes underneath it failed, a huge area of the westbound lanes were completely washed out. It was fixed enough to have one lane each way by Saturday, so we went to Cypress Hills Interprovincial Park. We did a cool hike through their forest on our second day there, and then believe it or not spent the rest of the afternoon lounging by the park's pool!! What a bizarre thing to have in a park ... but the beach wasn't nice at all so it worked for us. Also, the park has a dark sky preserve, which we took advantage of with Chris's telescope, but it didn't really ever get that dark out because the moon was so full and bright!
We crossed into Alberta yesterday, and spent the night in Dinosaur Provincial Park, which has some of the most dinosaur fossil findings in North America. We did an amazing hike through their Badlands, and the way that water and erosion shaped the land made it unbelievable to look at. We also got to watch a huge beaver cruise around, munching on plants, and we saw our first Mule Deer lounging in the hills. When coyotes started howling it was almost impossible to find, because it hid so low it looked like a rock from afar. Today we are headed to Kinbrook Provincial Park, and the general plan is to spend about and week and a half in southern Alberta, then catch a day or two of the Stampede, and then start heading north to see Chris's cousin Bev in Edmonton. After that .... Rockies here we come!