Borden to Blaine Lake

While a lot of my adventures lately have been via canoe, I took Labour Day off to explore in a vehicle.  James and I wanted to check out the mysterious Crooked Trees near Hafford, Saskatchewan so we made a day of it and explored more of the area around the North Saskatchewan River.

Music by Matt Epp

We hit the road from Saskatoon on Highway 16 to check out the old Borden Bridge.  Immediately upon arrival James decided that he was going to climb the truss and knew better than to ask my opinion until he was at the top and couldn't hear me over the wind.  I proceeded to have a few mini heart attacks from the ground where I reluctantly took photos of him being reckless.  But I did love photographing the geometric cement lines against the bright blue background.  PSA: Don't climb this bridge.

We pulled into the town of Borden next, hoping the farmer's market might be on but then we remembered it was a holiday and everything was closed.  We snapped a couple pictures of the museum before continuing to Radisson, stopping so I could get a few shots of the wheat fields on the way.

Our hope was to check out some antique stores in Radisson but again the stat holiday meant they were all closed.  We popped into the Sesula Mineral and Gem Museum and Rock Shop which was actually super cool.  The museum is curated by 13-year-old Judah Tyreman who also greeted us from behind the till and told us to feel free to touch and hold anything we wanted (including the fat black cat who enjoyed following us around).  It was such a neat store full of over 1500 rocks, gems, fossils, and minerals and I am beyond impressed that Judah runs it himself! Here's a great little article about how it came to be last summer.     

At last we made it to the Crooked Bush just north of Hafford.  This small aspen grove (only about a hundred metres in any direction) is a natural phenomenon as it's trunks and branches grow in random directions, suddenly twisting and turning rather than reaching up towards the sun.  Many studies and experiments have been done to figure out what's so special about these trees, compared to their regular looking cousins across the road, but no definite answer has been found.  I have seen many pictures of these trees in the past couple years but nothing quite compared to walking among them in real life.

Our final venture was to a little spot South East of Blaine Lake which is home to Saskatchewan's Largest Tree.  About 15km south of the town, on Highway 12, you'll find a sign for Tree Road pointing east.  Another 10 or so km along this road is a small white sign that says "tree" signalling for you to turn south into the river valley.  Note that this road is seasonal, so take caution if it's not a dry summer day like we had.  Was passed through a beautiful golden valley before entering a small grove of trees where another white sign pointed to The Popoff Tree.

This tree is nearly 5 metres in circumference but no longer taller than its neighbours as it was struck by lightning some years ago and lost its highest branches.  Though its exact age isn't known, the cottonwood-balsam poplar hybrid is believed to have been around well before the area was settled by Europeans and is one of the few remaining as they were heavily logged at that time.  A big thank you to my pal Ashlyn over at The Lost Girl's Guide for the suggestion and directions via this blog post by Sask Hiker when I called her last minute to ask how to get there. 

There is so much to discover in Saskatchewan and typically all it takes is a car full of fuel and a map of the back roads to get there.  And maybe someone to explore it with ;)