Day 35 – Moose Jaw, SK to Medicine Hat, AB

Some days are just better than others and we don’t know why. Today was one of those.

It’s the holiday weekend and lots of families are trying to squeeze the last days of camping into their summer. We started the day with no idea where we were going to stay and ended in a delightful campground.

The Route

This detail is almost useless until we leave Canada. Our base route will be TCH-1 all the way, with a few diversions to see special attractions. We drove 253 miles today with no diversions.

Observations

We enjoyed gradually changing terrain. It started with fields and crops as far as we could see and then changed into rolling hills and grazing land. The sky seemed to stretch forever.

Saskatchewan looks like big sky country, too.

Sodium sulfate mine at Chaplin Lake

Canadian Pacific at work

Ah, rolling hills at last!

And a Little House on the Prairie

We saw these derailed cars between the track and the highway.  The accident occurred at around 7:30pm on August 28th, involved 33 cars and appears to have been caused by extreme weather.

Towns were few and far between.

Entering Alberta

About Medicine Hat

The city is known for its large natural gas fields and is called “The Gas City”. We found it vibrant and attractive.

TCH-1 runs through the center of town.

Medicine Hat has the world's
largest  tee-pee.

We found the cheapest gasoline of the trip here - $3.78 per gallon.

The Campground

Gas City Campground is a public campground. It's attractive, has many amenities and is very well run. We were able to choose from the two remaining sites. 

This is what greeted us.

Tomorrow

We’re going to divert from TCH-1 east of Calgary. Route 569 will take us north to Drumheller and the Royal Tyrrell Museum (a center of paleontological research … think dinosaurs).