We will start in the far south eastern corner of Alberta. Our first night will be in Irvine. (They don’t know we’re coming yet! *grin*) I hope they’ll put on a big ol’ Fandango for us on August 10th. Then, starting August 11th, we ride. We won’t stay in the Cypress Hills, but we will do day rides in there for the first weekend of our journey. If you’ve never ridden there before, you’re in for a big fat treat. It’s beautiful and wild with flora and fauna you won’t find anywhere else in the province because when the last ice age happened, the Cypress Hills weren’t covered and scraped down into the USA!
If you go to the website and click on “Map”, you can see the individual stops. Basically, we’re coming out of that SE corner heading north west. At Bassano we’ll turn and work our way north east as far as Wainwright. From Wainwright we’ll head north west ’til we hit Fultonvale on September 1st.
Happy trails, Pinksters!
Wild Pink Yonder 
Yay. Now I know where I’ll be spending my time.
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Was just curious as to why we wouldn’t be staying right in Cypress Hills the first 2 nights?
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It seems that no one actually LIVES in Cypress Hills during the winter, so setting up our visit would be very difficult. And even if we COULD set up over the winter, the one and only town is just a summer village, so I don’t expect there would be much involvement by them. So we made the decision to visit the small towns NEAR there and to trailer in for the day.
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I don’t want to mess up any plans that you are making, but just so you know; they do have somewhat of a horse camp there and there are quite a few of the residents that are year round. I could talk to the conservation officer there for more info (see if they have a community association, etc) if you wanted. But like I said, I don’t want to mess up any plans you have in the works for Irvine, as until the village (Elkwater) was approached, who knows what sort of support/involvement there would be.
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Amy, I would be DELIGHTED if you were to take that on. At this point, nothing has been done with any of the towns. We’ve decided where we want to go (more or less), and will start to contact towns in the next week or so.
I was told by someone down there that no one lives there in the winter (okay … three people live there year round) and I’d be hard pressed to find out anything. Well, if we can’t firm something up before Christmas, we KNOW we’re gonna have trouble (BTDT) so I didn’t want to chance it. If we could START in Elkwater, with a Fandango Friday night and a something else Saturday night, I’d be over the moon. Hell, I’d be over the moon with a Friday Fandango and nuttin’ else, honey!
So … please go hard and I’ll talk to you next week (when I get something that resembles a life back). Meanwhile, we’re off to the rodeo (again … and again … and again)!
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I could be mistaken about the number of people that live there year round; I had just heard over the last few years, that more people were staying year round. I will get hold of the conservation officer that I know on Monday to find out some info on the town’s people, contacts, etc. for you. I do know that the ‘horse camp’ area doesn’t have water, so that would have to be hauled, but you have the water tank on the flat deck. There’s 7 or 8 pens, but lots of room to put up electric.
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