Camped in Cyprus Hills AB for 2 nights

Really interesting skies this morning

A couple of deer visited our campsite again this morning. This one seemed really curious:

Interested in us

But really too nosy about inside our neighbor's trailer

 

We took a few pictures on our way out of the campground this morning, kind of an overview of yesterday's pictures:

First, one of the frequent reminders that snakes are on the move

 

Apparently the park has 4 kinds of snakes migrating right now, including rattlers. We didn't see any, though we did try to stay snake-aware on our hikes.

This is the area we hiked through yesterday

Buildings are reconstructions of an RCMP outpost here years ago

Prairie Crocus. The flowers are about the size of a quarter.

Along the way, more active irrigation:

 

2 shots of a field of Canola show a real difference in unretouched pictures from 2 cameras:

Pocket-sized Nikon S9100 travel camera

Pixel 6 cell phone

 

We're still learning about the Nikon camera we were recently given. It has a longer optical zoom lens than the Pixel phones we have, which is really nice sometimes, but generally we like the Pixel pictures better. They are not always as different than the 2 above, but usually are somewhat different. We think in this case the Nikon picture was more the natural colours.

 

A neat line of trees along a ranch driveway

 

Once we got into ranch country we started to see antelope. They don't like fences, so more likely to see them in wide-open country: 

Some family groups

They were pretty unafraid, but would run away eventually

Trying to catch up with his family

3 bucks, all watching a different direction for danger

Some single bucks too

Likely safer in a group with more eyes watching out

South of Medicine Hat we saw a road sign to "Red Rock Coulee Natural Area", so had to investigate that. 

Here's a link <Red Rock Coulee> if you'd like more pictures and information.

It's an area with more really strange rocks:

See the rabbit here?

I'd likely have taken more pictures than I did, as it was a nice sunny day. However I felt a drop of rain and could hear rain coming, so walked quickly, then ran, for the van. The temperature dropped suddenly, and it wasn't rain, it was hail:

Sure glad I wasn't further from the van

Remember those interesting clouds earlier? They kept on being interesting throughout the day.

And here we are at our campsite for the next 2 nights, in Elkwater Lake's Firerock loop:

No hail in sight, at least not yet. There is a "severe thunderstorm watch" out for the area though. Looks like they should stay south or east of us though.