Positively Saskatchewan

I am positively from Saskatchewan and this is a celebration of a trip we took several years ago to Regina for a football camp.

The roads at times are like roller coasters, up, down, up, down, and that funny feeling you get when you plunge from the very top of a roller coaster to the foot of the roller coaster can be experienced at times on Saskatchewan roads.  Many roads are still gravel covered which also adds an element of adventure.  

The year we went had been a particularly wet spring and there were sloughs everywhere, water filled ditches and sometimes water overflowed onto the road.  

Because of the rain, ruts in the road made it challenging to travel quickly.  By the end of our trip, our backs were achy.  

Aside from the poor roads, the landscape always amazes me.  At times the prairie land is amazingly flat, and the great big sky, the barbed wire fences and power poles are the only really interesting things to see.  

At other times, tall silver sage scattered over the rolling hills add sculptural interest.  Then there are the fields that have been cultivated into the enormous hills, making one wonder how is it possible to farm on dry land and on a hill.  I can just imagine the newly arrived settlers' faces when they found their survey stakes and learned their assigned land was not near water and on a hill.  They probably stood there with their mouths open wide, eyebrows arched like rainbows, and thought to themselves, "What are we doing here?  Are we nuts?"

Saskatchewan's landscape can also entertain us with antelope, deer, cattle and hawks, hawks, and more hawks.  The many varieties of ducks and other water fowl swimming happily can also be very delightful.  Run down remnants of the past, old barns, houses and quonsets also are showcases.

As we were driving, I was struck by all the arches and curves, so I made that a focus on this iPad composition.  Groves of trees and bushes can also be periodically scattered throughout the countryside, choke cherries, Saskatoons, Cottonwoods, caraganas in between the fields of hay, wheat, rye... The amount of trees shown here is a slight exaggeration, but it is so very exciting to see trees on the prairie, that I drew many to show my love of them!

The trip to Regina brought back pleasant memories of visiting our family farms around Golden Prairie.  Oh how I can remember feeling so excited to visit my grandparents and cousins and aunts and uncles! It is sad that none of our relatives are left on the farms, but we sure have a lot of good memories remaining!

I can't decide which colour composition I like best, so here are four for you to decide which one is positively Saskatchewan.