Wednesday we headed out to Drumheller to visit the Royal Tyrell Museum – a great place for budding and actual paleontologists. We made a breakfast stop at Tim Hortons, then Lake Chestermere to visit an old uni friend, who is now a Calgary cop.
Headed north east to Drumheller, home of Alberta’s Badlands. We had glorious weather and my dear missed Alberta blue sky.
Prairies – road, and sky.
Fields, and sky.
Er, truck, and sky.
We stopped off at Horseshoe Canyon, a mini Grand Canyon.
We climbed into the valley and had an ice cream each at the top.
Then into Drumheller.
It’s a small town, peppered with dinosaurs. Yup, you read right. See that blue thing in front of the shop? It really is a dinosaur.
And here are some more I snapped here and there around town
These are precursors to the real thing…
a little closer to how they might have been in their day
And finally the real McCoy inside the Tyrell Museum.
Woolly Mammoth!
We wandered around these fossils, feeling rather small and inconsequential.
This is the right hind limb of a camarasaurus. I come up to its prehistoric knee. Yikes. Very very big.
And even real dino-poop. I thought this was hilarious – DH less so.
The museum is also home to lab technicians working on field finds and uncovering fossils.
The giant prehistoric ameoba like sea carnivores were really disturbing – I couldn’t even look at them. But the massive dinosaurs were awesome. Seriously, it was an amazing place.
We headed out to the hoodoos afterwards, and wandered about a small cluster of them.
Me(R) DH (middle) & the Chanster (L)
We drove by the new Crossirons Mall that opened that day – these are all the cars queuing to get into the mall
And that huge structure spanning the photo from left to right, that is the mall. Massive. Would give those dinosaurs a run for the money, I reckon.
And finally a little panorama of Calgary. Not the most beautiful perspective, but it does a good job at showing how flat and wide the city is. The tall cluster of buildings is downtown, about 20k from where we were.
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Wide Alberta Skies, straight prairie roads, and Hoodoos – wish I was there!
Nice the see the rest of the mall is open – I went to the Bass Pro shop in May and there was a lot of building still going on… it’s worth a visit – they have a sign asking you to check your guns and bows at the door and the decor shows that the art of Taxidermy is not dead (so to speak)
You’re making me want to visit. That museum looks fantastic!