Blogs from Drumheller, Alberta, Canada, North America

Riley, Ann and I took a long weekend trip to Calgary and Drumheller. We started at the Calgary Zoo which has a wonderful collection of animals. They also have a fun section with dinosaurs that you bump into along the trail. Riley's favourite animals were the penguins. We rented a car and drove to Drumheller to visit the town, the Tyrrell Museum and the Hoodoos. Riley's favourite dinosaurs were the Pterodactyls and the Tyrannosaurus Rex. We got to hike into the badlands and along the Hoodoo Trail. We also crossed the Star Mine suspension bridge before another visit to the museum. Lots to do on a quick trip.... read more

Geo: 51.461, -112.707Back in the early days of her policing career, DH worked with a significant number of dinosaurs so she was eager to explore the former dinosaur playground in Drumheller. Theoretically this area holds abundant evidence (including a treasure trove of fossils) around the extinction of dinosaurs, but DH is convinced that many of them (including the relatively small brained Testosteronasaurus) survived the ice age. Many palaeontologists might argue that the sense of humour of a dinosaur started and finished with body noises which, again, would support DH's argument that extinction nor evolution has happened in all species.On the other hand, the sense of humour of the good denizens of Drumheller has evolved well beyond flatulence, and they've spread fibreglass dinosaurs all over town and, when we were there, they were just removing knitted wool ... read more

Drumheller is a wonderful little town full of dinosaurs. This little city in the middle of nowhere is one of Nane's favourite places to be and this made the trip extremely fascinating. We stopped on the way in at Horseshoe Glacier but because of the rare ice fog it was kind of hard to see how spectacular I bet it really is. Our first major stop was at the Tyrell museum which was beyond anything I had imagined it to be. The building was filled with fossils, dinosaur sculptures, more information then I knew what to do with, and even a real fossil recovery room. New major fossils are constantly being found and research is always being done to try and fit the ancient puzzle together. The prehistoric marine life exhibits would have caught my dads ... read more

The first time I went to Drumheller (Google map http://goo.gl/maps/dMnmo), I was accompanied by some friends of friends from Australia. We hiked around Horseshoe Canyon. We visited the Hoo Doos (which, by the way, are very close to the road - we somehow drove by them and out into the wilderness for about a ½ hour before we gave up and turned around...well, actually, the road completely ran out...when we got back to the main road, we realized the Hoo Doos were right there AND there’s a parking lot... ) The funniest thing about that trip, though, was that the Australians had never seen gophers before and were much more intrigued by them! And chased them around, calling "Come hee-ah little goofah". I actually wondered about this "goofah" issue, so I Googled, and it turns out ... read more

From the Rockies, we headed straight past Calgary and towards Drumheller. ‘Holy sweet Tuesday!’ was Brads exclamation as we headed off the number 2 and onto the 72 east and all we could see ahead of us was flat (not dead flat yet) agricultural land. ‘Can we still see the Rockies?’. Other brilliant conversations that evening included; Brad: ‘we’re entering wheatgerm county’, me: ‘I wonder why they call it that?’, Brad: ‘I think it’s because of all the canola’. After a brief stop for supper (burritos – Brad was madly craving meat by now!) on the side of the road, we made it to Drumheller with enough time before sundown to count an absurd number of dinosaur statues lining the streets. Drumheller is located along the Red Deer River in the region of Alberta called the ... read more