CYPRESS HILLS

Cypress Hills is an oasis in the midst of the open prairie that surrounds it. It is the highest point of land in Canada between the Rocky Mountains and Labrador. The park is home to rare wild flowers, towering stands of lodgepole pine and 200 species of birds and mammals that include moose, elk, deer and antelope. A giant plateau, once surrounded by glaciers, Cypress Hills attracts 250,000 people each year.

South of Cypress Hills is the Frenchman River Valley, an area that has drawn international attention with the discovery of a near-complete Tyrannosaurus rex skeleton. "Scotty" is one of only about a dozen in the world, and is the feature exhibit at the T. rex Discovery Centre located in the Town of Eastend.

Eastend is the home of Wallace Stegner, a Pulitzer prize winning writer who described the prairie landscape as "a distance without limits." Wallace Stegner is one of the stories you will discover when you explore the Great Southwest.

If You Go: Cypress HIlls