I had warned D that we would be travelling about 40km roundtrip on gravel range roads. Grumbling (all the way), he obliged. The gravel road ended and we then shifted through 2.6km of soft sand track. Where the heck was I taking him?
Finally, a parking lot with a few cars, and a sign. By this time, D was nearly ready to toss me out the door and drive away, so I was happy we had finally arrived. Going into this excursion, I didn’t know a great deal about the Sandhills – I just thought it would be something different from the flat prairie landscape we’d been driving through for the past several days.
Turns out, I was right.
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| Not exactly the Mojave Desert - but maybe Canada's version? |
The Great Sandhills cover an area of over 1,900 square kilometres, and were formed by the sediment deposited from the melting glaciers of the Laurentide Ice Sheet over 13,000 years ago. Though these sand dunes are relatively small (none are over 50ft in height), they can move up to 25ft per year due to wind and sparse ground cover.
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| How large do you think this sand formation is? |
And then there was the boot tree. That itself was almost worth the drive, don’t you think?
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| The Boot Tree - a nod to the Sandhill Stockmen's Association |
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| Can you see our van in the parking lot? |
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