From Josh:

June 14, 2021

Grasslands National Park is Canada’s only national park that represents a prairie grassland ecosystem. It’s located in Southern Saskatchewan and is broken up into two parts that are about 150km apart – the West-East Blocks. We recently spent four nights in the West Block and were really surprised by how much we liked it there. I booked us there as it is one of Canada’s Dark Sky Preserves – areas of the country where there is virtually no light pollution so you can get a clear view of the night sky. But there is much more to Grasslands than that! We enjoyed walks through the native prairie, biking around the campground, learning about and seeing wildlife, exploring the backcountry by truck, and experiencing some insane weather.

There is a herd of wild Bison at Grasslands that were re-established thereafter nearly becoming extinct. They roam freely, grazing on native grasses, and are generally undisturbed by people and cars. In addition, we saw Coyotes, a Badger, Black-Tailed Prairie Dogs (different from the common Gopher), and lots of different birds.

Our time in Grasslands was quite the adventure though, and to be honest we were pretty fatigued by the end of our time there. The day we arrived it was very windy – so windy that the auto-leveling system in our trailer was confusing and wouldn’t level itself. The wind kept picking up our plastic leveling blacks and blowing them across the prairie That night, we experienced the first of two major prairie storms. Torrential rain, high winds, lightning, and thunder – it was the first storm we’d experienced in the rig and we were quite nervous.