Our provincial parks will be seeing a $13 million investment from the Saskatchewan government over the next year.
"We're committed to providing facilities in our parks that are safe, accessible, and well-maintained for park visitors," said Jennifer Szakacs, from the Park Planning and Facilities Management with Saskatchewan Parks.
She said they are planning infrastructure upgrades in the parks here in the southeast.
"These include new campground service centres at Saskatchewan Landing and Duck Mountain Provincial Parks. We have electrical service improvements at Moose Mountain Provincial Park, and water system upgrades at Sask Landing and Moose Mountain Provincial Park, and then boat launch upgrades are planned for Douglas Provincial Park."
Some of these improvements were made during the 2022 season.
"We have four new days pavilions at Echo Valley, Buffalo Pound, Blackstrap, and Pike Lake Provincial Parks, and these are facilities that offer space for group or family gathering gatherings and events, and are available to our visitors," she noted. "We also have a re-developed campground at Pine Hill in Cypress Hills Provincial Park, and that offers 42 electric sites, 18 full service sites, tenting sites, and a new service centre. And then this year, they would have also seen on new visitor reception centers at Sask Landing Provincial Park and Buffalo Pound Provincial Park."
Szakacs said their guests can continue camping all the way up until the end of September at Provincial Parks.
"So, I know it's getting chillier here, maybe now, some of that is in the forecast, but there is certainly still an opportunity to get out in the provincial parks," she reminded. "You can book online all the way through till the end of September. We have had some great September weather, and maybe some of that will be back for us here, so fall is a beautiful time out in the provincial parks with all the fall colours, and still a good chance to get out there and and make use of the weather while we have it."
She added while the numbers for this season are not yet all the way tallied, "visitation is on track to be above pre pandemic levels, so above what we saw in 2019."
In fact, in the 2021 provincial camping season Sask Parks saw over 1,000,000 park visit and there more than 400,000 camping nights were spent in our provincial parks.