With a provincial border right through the center of town Lloydminster is in fact not two towns that share the same name, but just one town divided in half. One part of Lloydminster falls on the Alberta side and the other  falls on the Saskatchewan side making it very unique.

To deal with the differences between the two provinces Saskatchewan made the exemption of giving its side an exemption in sales tax so they don't lose business to Alberta.

Sadly not much time for photography due to the very long hours created by the mad rush to get to Ottawa in four days. Looks like central Saskatchewan is an area we will have to visit again sometime soon. 1000+ km a day meant that we could only stop for pee breaks, which if time correctly got us to some pretty cool locations.

The South Saskatchewan river used to be one of the most dangerous rivers in the prairie in the early 20th century. Ice blocks would cause lots of damage in Medicine Hat and Saskatoon until a dam was formed diverting portions of the river elsewhere. Since then the river has calmed creating many sand bars and cultivated shorelines.

As we look at a map figuring out which locations would make the best aerial images, we sat and wondered what the scenery looked like before people. The many lakes of Saskatchewan must have been filled with birds and animals while over a million bison and pronghorn roamed the grassland where we now drive. The corners of the ponds being the only remnants  of the ancient marsh.

Who ever said that the prairies are boring was very, very wrong. Every few kilometers we had to stop the car to take pictures of the ever changing scenery and skies; sometimes even getting the car stuck in the mud during the process. If anything we leave the prairie still wanting more, can't wait to come back in the near future.

Abandoned or not the prairie is home to thousands of grain elevators, each cities or towns skyline isn't complete without one. However sometimes you find a few that sit like ancient statues in the flat landscape waiting for the future and dreaming of the past.

Gas, lakes and a pet frog; as we drove east from Estevan towards Manitoba the scenery changed so fast it was as if we crossed an invisible border. The scenery changed from  green and yellow rolling hills into hundreds of small marshes with a few farms and dozens of gas wells in between. There might not be a distinctive boundary between the prairie, but there is a huge difference from one end to the next.

Preserving one of the last remaining prairie ecosystems Grasslands National Park is the closest we can get to seeing what the land looked like prior to European Settlement. Plains bison, owls, foxes and ferrets are some of the rare animals that live in the park, some of which can't be found anywhere else in Canada. Later in the year we hope to return here and capture some of the notorious  storms.

First evening, first prairie storm; all day we were hopping to see some thunder and super cells and we finally got something slightly close to it. It's not necessarily the big one we were hoping for, but it was still exciting to see. The storm just missed Estevan before heading for the border; which might have been a good thing as the last one flooded town.

The roads might be long and straight, but every little valley had something in store for us. The pretty short drive from Grasslands National Park to Estevan took us all day to drive just because we kept on stopping the car. Pretty crazy to think how many different atmospheres you can see in the stretch of a few hours.