Monday, July 21 – Regina to Cypress Hills

I am not 100% sure this trip qualifies for a place in our travel blog. We are going to a genealogy convention of the Germans from Russia Heritage Society in Spokane, Washington and to visit Darren’s family in Vancouver, but we are camping out a few nights, so maybe that qualifies as a holiday.

We have been to the GRHS convention in Bismarck a couple of times. Every few years the Spokane branch put on the convention. I have often thought that we should combine attendance there with a trip to Vancouver sometime. So that is what we are doing.

Laura and Brett dropped in this morning about 7:30 with the girls to say good-bye. They were sure full of energy at that time of day. Not Laura and Brett – but the twins.

We got away at 9:30 and stopped in Swift Current at noon for an ice cream snack. From there we carried on to the Cypress Hills Vineyard and Winery south of Maple Creek, arriving just after 2. They have a pretty good setup there. It is an attractive facility and nicely landscaped. We had some very good sandwiches and salads; Celeste had some cherry juice; and I had some of their made on premises wine. We were sitting in the open on the patio, but moved under cover when it began to sprinkle rain. The rain soon let up and we toured their vineyard of several kinds of grapes, rhubarb, and chokecherries.

From the winery we had the option of a direct route on a good gravel grid road and a back road into the park. But with the rain in the area, we did not want to take a chance on the back road, so we backtracked to Maple Creek on the hard surface road and took the highway from there. Nearing the park we ran into a heavy thunderstorm that forced us to slow down with reduced visibility. We were thankful we were not on the back road at that point, although there is no telling whether the same storm hit on that road. When we got our map of the park, it showed that road as “Impassable when wet.” Better safe than sorry.

Since there were still some rain clouds in the area, we thought we would get a room instead of camping, as we had intended, but the resort was all booked up for the night, so we headed for the campground. As it turned out, the sky soon cleared off completely. We drove around the village for a bit, as we had not been there for many years. We grabbed another ice cream cone and had a snack before turning in early – and I mean early – like 8 pm. With those rowdy pre-schoolers running around playing, it took us at least ten minutes to fall asleep.