Sept 14th. Writing-on-Stone Provincial Park.

We were very pleased to realise that Milk River is actually only about 90 minutes from Waterton Lakes…..makes it kind of our local park…!!!

The drive from Waterton to Milk River for our last couple of days before the house closed, is a straight drive east, just slightly north of the Alberta/Montana border. We stopped back at Under 8 flags campground again…..a very handy spot for the border….and our house..!!!

To avert some impatient thumb twiddling we took the drive to Writing-on-Stone Provincial Park.

This park is another gem in the Alberta Parks portfolio. I had tried to snag us a campsite there…but there was nothing available around the time we needed it. When we actually saw the campground…we were even more disappointed to not have found a spot there. It’s a really lovely campground, right down on the Milk River, surrounded by big old cottonwood trees…..

This park has a really fantastic visitor centre with lots of information on the history ,geology, flora and fauna of the park.

As you walk down from the visitor centre you enter this ‘alien ‘ landscape of hoodoos…….it’s amazing…hard to believe all a naturally occurring phenomenon.

The Hoodoo trail has been set up as an interpretive walk. ……and it’s been really well done. As you start the walk, there are little booklets that explain the various lookout points/points of interest along the trail.

Even though this is another badlands landscape, it is completely different again from all the other we have seen. (Dinosaur Park, Horseshoe Canyon Trail, Badlands National Park SD )

This park has quite the array of petroglyphs…

Weaving through the rocks, climbing the carved stairs, wowing at the views around every corner.

It’s not the longest hike we have done…but its richness is unparalleled.

The rock formations are incredibly beautiful….

…and the added glimpses of the river and the valley all add to the magical quality of the park….

There were many signs warning that we were visiting during snake migrating season. We had a few sightings…the first was at one of the lookouts, I turned a corner and found this chap sunning himself on a rock…!!

He was amazing…..from the ‘shushing sound he made as he wove across the rock…to his incredible camouflage once he was in the undergrowth. You could see him when he moved, but if he was still….even though you knew exactly where he was…it was like he just became invisible…..incredible. (no rattling…!!)

This area along the Milk River was a wintering spot for Prairie Peoples. Both because it is warmer by the river, and because there is an abundance of berries and wildlife.

Further along the trail there are more pictures. The big one at the end of the trail is an extremely cool battle scene…complete with the showers of bullets from the European invaders….

It’s a huge panel of carving with intricate detail of both sides of the battle….very cool.

On the path back, we met the next prairie rattlesnake…I almost stepped on this big sucker as he made his way across the trail…. scared the living……*&%^$ out of me……LOL…..

It’s such an incredible place…we are very fortunate to have this on our doorstep. ( 41 kms from our house..!!) We took note that they do night sky activities here…..we might have to check out some of their organised night sky observances thingummies….there is so little light pollution here that the night skies are quite something.

EXTRA PIX