Quick stop near Gardiner Dam
Diefenbaker Sandcastles
Playing with the sandstone
Peaceful and relaxing

Some time ago I was searching on the internet for some things to do in Saskatchewan when I came across THIS site, which had some pictures of places I had never heard of. A couple of those places were the Great Sand Hills which Amie and I visited last fall (click here) and the the killdeer badlands which Doug and I visited last month (click here). Even more striking, was this picture of these mysterious Diefenbaker Sandcastles. Our first stop was at Gardiner Dam when I thought I saw a whale in the lake but it was actually just massive ice buckling into huge piles due to the morning thaw (very similar to a previous adventure last year that we thought was an island
stampede – click here. From there we went to Beechy Saskatchewan to find there were no signs to the attraction. Our only piece of information was that they were south west of the city.

We started driving west and then cut south randomly on some grid roads. We just kept picking random south or west roads (some leading to dead ends or farms) until we very surprisingly found some old signs pointing to the sandcastle area. Finally we made to the end of the road with a no trespassing sign and parked the car. We decided we could probably never trace our steps again and it was pure luck that we stumbled upon the right road.

We whipped out the Coleman stove and cooked a nice breakfast of scrambled eggs and strawberry pancakes before embarking on foot to find if these sandcastles were really as glamorous as in the internet photograph. We walked around for over an hour before finding a sign, not for the sandcastles, but for this other attraction called Sunken Hill. We thought that it must have been the sandcastle area too and thought we saw something that looked like sandcastles in the distance, so we decided to head back pretty soon. Amie sat down for a bit while I took a final look around the area.

After walking along the cliffs a bit, I spotted another sign in the distance and that was it! When we finally found the sandcastle formation it was pretty exciting because they really did look amazing. There is a total contrast between them and the surrounding hills. The view was extraordinary with the dropoff cliffs and the Diefenbaker lake in the background. Very recommended hiking adventure!

And just when you thought no more could be done in a day, we drove to Outlook and Saskatoon to pick up wedding suits from the Koops and the Vincents, then dropped off some stuff for Amie’s friend Crystal in Saskatoon, then hung out all evening with Katie and Paul Korchinski before driving back to Regina in the night!

-steve-

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