Back in 2015, when I first met Doug and Rob and Marv and Warren, they mentioned that their private men’s club sometimes included a woman: from time to time, a Marjorie rode with them. A year later, I got to meet the famous Marjorie, and her other half Blair, and have run into them a few more times again over the years. They have always mentioned that if ever I needed a place to stay, they were right off the Trans Canada.
When I was planning out some tentative itineraries for this year’s trip, I thought that on the day I left Cypress, I might just give myself a cruise-y day: I’d pack up in a leisurely fashion, I’d restock my pantry in Maple Creek, and I’d truck my horsie a mere 2 ½ hrs down the road to the layover paddocks at Kinetic Park in Swift Current. But a few days before the end of my stay at Cypress Hills, Marjorie and Blair had re-issued their invitation to stay at their place, and so I managed to rise and shine and greet the day early enough to be pulling out of Cypress at 8:30 in the morning, behind Doug and Rob who were also headed home. At 9:30 a.m. on a Sunday morning, there would be no chance of grocery shopping in Maple Creek, but regardless of where I eventually stopped to buy food, I’d hit Kinetic Park by noon. There was little point in twiddling my thumbs in Swift Current for an entire half-day, so why not push on to the Moose Jaw/Regina area?
Also: I was feeling all teary and sad at leaving Cypress, and the thought of seeing familiar faces that evening made my heart a little happier.
A few miles away from Blair and Marjorie’s farm, just past Stony Beach, I pulled over to check my directions and make sure I was on the right track. I just happened to be parked in the driveway of the local Hutterite colony. Within approximately point four of a second, a passing truck stopped to see if I needed a hand. It was a Hutterite fella, and he was keen to chat. Asked me if I knew about Hutterites, talked to me about where in North America the colonies were dispersed, and told me that Blair and Marjorie (“the horse people”) were very good neighbours.
(Story later that evening from Blair: when the Hutterites first moved in, they came around to the farm trick or treating. Blair asked one little kid, as one does, what he was dressed as. The little boy answered: “A Hutterite.”)
Also, BTW: there is no beach at Stony Beach. There is no body of water at Stony Beach.
Pai was settled into a roomy pen for the night, and I got settled back in to civilization: a long hot shower, laundry, a glass of wine, a tasty dinner, and conversation into the evening with delightful company. At eighty-some years old, Blair is a prairie boy, but he spent years and years and years in the Maritimes, and, as do many Saskatchewanians, he reminds me of my uncles and cousins on PEI.
While we were all in Cypress, Marjorie had mentioned riding in a place called Kenosee, where a new horse camp had been set up by the equestrian trails. The fact that I’d never heard of it was a siren song to this girl who loves exploring new places. I checked the driving distance, and it was short enough to that I would be able to hop on the steed for an afternoon ride once I arrived.
Kenosee Lake is a low-key resort town, and Moose Mountain Provincial Park has lots of different campgrounds and facilities. Despite the place giving off the kind of vibe that makes a person nervous about all the camping spots being full, I was confident that my Monday arrival would assure me a campsite, and when I turned up at the equestrian camp, all was well: the camp was empty, and, aside from a half-dozen cars that checked the place out over the afternoon and evening, I had the place to myself the entire time I was there.
After a quick snack, I saddled up the gee gee, and we headed off. The Kenosee trails are cross-country ski trails that moonlight as horse trails, and as such they are wide, grassy bridle paths – truly a walk in the park. Our 16 km ride through hardwood forest took us through terrain that was winding and hilly, without any particularly taxing steep climbs. We skirted lake after lake, both large and small, with some of the trails offering views from above, and some skirting the lakeshore. Snowy white anemones were the predominant wildflower.
My next stop was Spruce Woods Provincial Park in Manitoba. I chose it because it was familiar and comfortable (Hot showers! Flush toilets!) and would be a layover that would allow my asthmatic horse to be outside in a roomy pen without me having to set up an e-fence corral, and which was close enough to Kenosee to make an afternoon post-arrival ride entirely feasible. It was all win, win, win.
The first time I heard about Spruce Woods, I was warned off visiting in June, as it was a buggy time of year. I ignored the advice and did a quick overnight reconnaissance to see whether I wanted to return for a longer stay in the fall. The bugs were utterly unimpressive.
This time…
It was like the time the mister and I were canoeing with my sis and her boyfriend on Great Central Lake on Vancouver Island, and, having read all the warnings about the wind coming up strong and dangerous in the middle of the day, we hugged the shoreline on our first two days of paddling. The water was like glass the entire time. On the third day, we decided that the warnings were vastly overstated, and we did our paddling well out from shore. The wind came up, the waves were massive, and we barely made shore without our canoes being swamped.
The warnings were, emphatically, not overstated.
The Spruce Woods bug situation was like that. I unloaded my horse, tossed her in a paddock, and she immediately lost her shit. (It should have been a clue that two of the three horses next to here were suited up in masks, boots, and fly sheets – that, and the fact that the one horse who was bare naked was running around his paddock like the devil was on his back). I grabbed her bug suit, and dressed her up and sprayed her down. She explained to me that my doing so made things marginally better, but that I was a total dick for bringing her here and she wasn’t sure we could be friends any more.
I collared a passing camper and asked her whether the bugs were bad out on the trail. With a haunted, shell-shocked look on her face like someone who has been fighting zombies 24/7 for the past week has just been asked if the monsters are bad today, she affirmed that yes, yes they were. They were very bad.
With what I think qualifies as admirable optimism, I got Pai geared up for the trail. Her tack included her fly mask and fly boots, and I bathed her in a soup of chemicals: fly spray and fly roll-on and Deep Woods Off adding up to 5 different purportedly effective repellent ingredients.
We headed out on what should have been a very easy, very pretty trip, and what ended up being one of the most thoroughly unpleasant rides I have ever been on. We rode a trail I only knew about thanks to talking to new friend Kristen last fall, and which is known to me inside my head as “Kristen’s River Trail”. About a kilometer out, things were so shite that I entertained the idea of turning back, but I thought, “Surely it will get better in the woods?” And it did. For ten minutes or so on a winding single-track I’d never been on before, the bugs left us alone and I thought we were in the clear. But that was it. For the rest of the ride, she tossed her head and shook her head and bit at her shoulders and stopped every few feet to kick at her belly.
Turns out, the bug situation in June had not been overstated.
I ain’t no entomology expert but in that bug-o-rama of All Things That Bite I can affirm the perpetrators of our assault included: horseflies, deer flies, stable flies, black flies, mosquitoes. Oh, and also ticks. Which don’t hurt when they bite but have got to be the creepiest and crawliest of all the creepy-crawlies you might discover on your person. I found three of them on me.
There was a thunderstorm warning for the Park that night. My phone weather app was suggesting that winds could be 100km/hr, hail could be the size of baseballs, and the rain could be torrential. I yet again sought intel from a fellow camper (and endurance rider), Natasha. “How seriously do you take these warnings?” I asked. “Well,” she said, “I don’t think it’s going to be southern US twister material…” but she did think that moving my rig from the wide open to a spot under the trees might be wise given the risk of hail.
I was glad I’d moved when the first hail fell and was the size of raspberries – having once had my roof vent smashed by prairie hail, I have a lot of respect for prairie thunderstorms. But that little hurrah was it for the hail that night. The storm put on a very impressive light show, and at one point the rain did hammer down for a while – you could hear it coming like a freight train for minutes before it hit, that’s how heavy it was – but all in all, it was a bit of a fizzler.
The warnings were definitely overstated.
Camp Notes for Horsey Folk
Moose Mountain Provincial Park (Kenosee)
The equestrian campground at Moose Mountain Provincial Park has about six pipe corrals of varying size – some could easily accommodate two horses, one is only about 10’x10′. There is a pit toilet and non-potable water; there is also a large shelter with a wood stove, a picnic table, and a pile of firewood.
There are no designated campsites, but I figure about 5 rigs could fit in the level area parallel to the pens, and maybe another 1-2 in the grassy middle of the driveway circle. There are two fire/barbecue stands at one side of camp adjacent to a concrete pad, with a single picnic table between them. There is a manure area right by the pens, with a wheelbarrow (no fork).
Once you get out of camp (via what looks like a relatively newly cut trail) and into the actual trail system, the trails are well-signed. They are very wide, and footing is excellent. There’s enough distance there to maybe spend a long weekend riding – the out-and-back from camp is about 2.5 km each way.
Cost is $20/night.
Spruce Woods Provincial Park
For information on Spruce Woods, my most recent post here has links to earlier camp descriptions (scroll down to Camp Notes). Descriptions are still accurate.
una chica y su caballo 