What sounds more like a bad hangover is by far one oof the most magical places in our province of Manitoba. In Spruce Woods Provincial Park there are the Spirit Sands – a dessert both by looks with all the sand dunes left by the receding glaciers of ages gone, but also in terms of rain. It rains so infrequently in the Spirit sands that it is indeed a true desert!
The Devil’s Punchbowl is a crater like depression in the desert that is cut through by a river and houses a small pool of water. As I kid I recall it being almost just as sandy as the dessert itself making its name apt – a bowl of punch that only the Devil would take the time to walk to to get a drink.
Nature is indominable and it has taken root in the most spectacular way around the punchbowl. What once was sandy is now ripe with trees, grasses that achor the sand dunes and poison ivy – that I stepped into on several occasions without thinking to get some pictures.
-KMSB
