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Tuesday, July 31, 2012 at 10:22 AM

Buffalo Pound Provincial Park
Buffalo Pound Provincial Park - Sunday,August 5, 2012

Not all provincial parks in Saskatchewan were created equal, more accurately, are kept up equally. I have no idea as to why this is, perhaps you might want to discuss this with your MLA, but the observations one makes when visiting these provincially run recreational/conservational places is all I have to go on. The first observation one makes when visiting a provincial park in Saskatchewan is that they are choice park locations and everyone I have been to, seems completely appropriate as a place to celebrate and enjoy the nature of this remarkable province.

This summer we have been to four parks and it is interesting to compare and contrast these widely separated and long established parks. We visited Greenwater Lake Provincial Park in our part of the province, Moose Mountain Provincial Park in the province's southeast where I grew up and the western side of Cypress Hills Interprovincial Park. This is a good sample of what this part of Canada is like. Greenwater Lake suffers from inferior roads and streets and in general looks like maintenance is not a high priority. Down at Kenosee Lake the roads and streets are outstanding and the general park like nature of the place is first rate. Elkwater Lake on the Alberta side of Cypress Hills Interprovincial is a magnificent gem. Great access and internal roads and the look of a place that its government takes pride in maintaining.

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We are, at the time I am writing this, camped in Buffalo Pound Provincial Park just north of Moose Jaw in the beautiful beginnings of the Qu'Appelle valley system. It is something of a blend of the other parks we seen this year. Unlike Greenwater, Kenosee and Elkwater Buffalo Pound is not crowded, despite the shear fact that the place is outrageously beautiful. Like Moose Mountain the internal roads are excellent and the lawns, playgrounds, picnic areas and campsites are just outstanding, more than equal to Moose Mountain.

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The inequality comes with access. The primary road into the park from highway #2 north of Moose Jaw (#201) is a shoulderless stretch of pavement with a listed speed of 90 kph when it is really only safe at 70 or 80 kph. One chunk of the road is across a slough and has a speed restriction of 30 kph, but our 8 tonne motorhome swayed as we were near to breaking through the surface. Not good!

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The provincial parks are all heavily accessed by both Saskatchewan people and the $1.4 billion dollar, out of province visitors, who bring huge tourist revenue to this province each year. Both we the people of Saskatchewan, and our visitors, deserve safe, first rate roadways to and inside our parks.

Boating at Buffalo Pound Lake is really a great experience, because you are in a lake lined with green hills and exciting scenery and you have some place to go. The park's boat launch is spacious and the parking lot has rooms to move your equipment before and after being in the water.

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For swimmers, the park's swimming pool is just a dandy, with magnificent green lawns stretching out into the picnic and play areas nearby. Further west, near the MapleVale campground is an east facing sandy beach and a buoyed swimming area. With temperatures in the mid twenties this morning, just before twelve, there was a lone sunbather on the beach and one swimmer in the water. It has a huge parking area and there are excellent concessions at both the pool and beach area.

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Camping at Buffalo Pound is really just about what everyone needs. It has variety and abundance. There are excellent group camping sites, a really vast tenting area without electricity and for those like ourselves who are not inclined to rough it, there are a large number of electrical sites with more than half being side parking, which work well with large units who want to drive through. In both camp sites we had, the sites were large enough for our 32 foot motorhome, but we had to unhitch the towed and back in. However, the sites were big, level and had fire pits with good picnic table and free firewood.

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Something about Buffalo Pound which is not the case in so many camp sites we have been in, is that at night, there is no sounds, other that the breeze and the occasion training jet from CFB Moose Jaw. No distant trains, no freeway rumble, no godaweful Harley rumble and not a hint of the din of modern urban life.

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But all is not perfect. Buffalo Pound is a provincial park and so it shares the distressing lack of useable information both in print or on line. The tourism Saskatchewan web site gives you a hint about the park, but is really short on specifics like maps and directions. The provincial park's web sites are a waste of your time visiting, if you want information on this or any provincial park. The basics are simply not there. To make matters worse, the provincial government has encased all of its parks in a telephone blackout. If you want to inquire about the availability of camping in one of their parks, you can not call the park in question. You must call the reservation number (1-855-737-7275) which is not answered by a person, but a series of questions which seem completely unrelated and a waste of time. You can try their reservation web site and it works about as well as the average provincial highway and costs between ten and twelve dollars in addition to your camping fee.

Last night, we were in Moose Jaw looking for a camp site. Our plan was to go to our favourite gem of a park in the area, Besant, the highway campsite west of Moose Jaw. However they have an event on this week and were full. A call to River Park came up empty as with our tow unit, we were simply to big for River Park. There is a privately owned RV campground at Buffalo Pound but so far it remains a mystery to us. It is listed online with an Ominica Street address in the city of Moose Jaw but says it is at Buffalo Pound Lake. Last year using our GPS we actually went to that address on Ominica Street and it must be the residential location of the owner of the campground because that is all we found. The telephone number listed is a Moose Jaw telephone number and I phone that number twice and in both cases got a confused man who's number is being listed for the campground.

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I then tried looking up the provincial park and as mentioned discovered that there was simply nothing useful on the web site to help us. So, I called the provincial reservation number. After some menus, I waited and an actually human answered, but she was unintelligible to my limit hearing and I passed the phone on to my wife, who discovered that there were four sites available at Buffalo Pound Park. But since it was after six, we could not reserve one of those but had to take our chances driving out there. With that in mind and the limited quality of the access road in mind, I set out with the motorhome and the Escape in tow. We got to the gate and a wonderful young woman got us a camp site and we went to it and had an enjoyable night in a beautiful site in MapleVale campground.

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Because it was so nice, we decided to stay two more nights, but our site had been booked and we were assigned another site. We were given incorrect information as to which campground we were to go to and had to call the reservation number to get the the actual park office number to find out that the fuzzy information about our. We understood that we were to go to Shady Lane, but had actually assigned us a site in Trail's End. We were unable to find the site and a cyclist came to our rescue and helped us find the site. No assistance from the parks people of Buffalo Pound Provincial Park.

By the way, in the three RV parks in South Dakota and Minnesota we actually had a "follow me" cart lead us to our sites and advise us on parking.

The last thing that needs to be said, is that the provincial park reservation policy needs to be scrapped, not revised or modified, it needs to be scrapped. First come first served is fair. During the long weekend at Moose Mountain Provincial Park we sat in the middle of a swathed hay field, which was overflow parking. We were surround by only a few occupied campsites and the rest were reserved sites left empty for both nights we were there. No picnic table, no camp fire and no electricity. Drive through any provincial campground anytime from the May long weekend to Labour Day and you will discover most of the camp sites empty. They are reserved and unoccupied. It doesn't seem right.

Now if you want to take your family to a great spot to camp and enjoy southern Saskatchewan, I can recommend Buffalo Pound. It lacks a golf course but it has every thing else you need. Great showers and washrooms and magnificent scenery.