The southern part of Saskatchewan is part of the prairies, and from what I saw, mainly consists of extremely flat landscapes with farms and massive fields. Then imagine my surprise when I found out we were going to visit sand dunes!

The landscape is extremely flat
The Great Sandhills are located close to a tiny town called Leader and are very difficult to find. They are the largest area of sand dunes in Canada, covering more than 1900 square km. The dunes are always moving and create an ever-changing landscape. We started our exploration at the museum and visitor centre in Sceptre, the closest community to the sandhills. The museum is a combination of rooms each showing a different aspect of life in the area throughout history. With a combination of items and information signs, I definitely learnt a lot from the museum.

Museum showing how life was a long time ago
We then continued down what ended up being a dirt road with no signage looking for the sandhills. The only thing we had to direct us was a hand drawn map from the visitor centre. After turning a corner we saw some sand dunes, and the parking lot. Getting out of the car I realised how scorching hot it was, it almost felt like we were in the dessert.

The sandhills seen from the parking lot

You can see how tall the dunes are
We climbed the closest sand dune, where the was also some grass and a path to walk on. On the top of this sand dune there was a fantastic view of the sandhills spreading as far away as we could see. There was also an archway with cowboy boots on of there for some reason.

Grass covered sandhills as far as you can see

Cowboy boot archway
The next sand dune we went to was quite a bit bigger, and did not have any grass on it at all. We saw a man on the dune, trying to slide down on a toboggan, but he did not manage to get enough speed. It was really interesting watching this man being the only person on the sand dune. While I did climb a few meters up the dune it was way to hot to go all the way to the top.

So much sand

Pretty neat backdrop

Tobogganing time
Back in the comfort of an air-conditioned car, we continued driving through the flat prairie landscape.
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