Cypress Hills Interprovincial Park

Cypress Hills Interprovincial Park is unlike anywhere else on the Canadian prairies — a plateau rising sharply above the surrounding grasslands to elevations that escaped the last ice age, creating a landscape of dense lodgepole pine forest, clear trout streams, and remarkably cool summer temperatures. Straddling the Saskatchewan-Alberta border, the park became Canada's first interprovincial park in 1989, and it remains a destination that genuinely surprises first-time visitors who arrive expecting flat farmland and find forest instead.

On the Saskatchewan side, the park centres on a well-developed campground with over 500 sites, making it one of the largest camping facilities in the provincial park system. The trails here are among the best in Saskatchewan — varied, well-marked, and traversing terrain that shifts from open meadows to deep coniferous forest. Fishing for trout in the spring-fed streams is a draw for anglers, while birders come for species more typical of the Rockies than the prairie. In winter, the park is a ski destination with groomed cross-country trails.