The road to Drumheller was quite nice, as there were hoodos everywhere. But getting to the city was like seeing the Madrid all over again (sorry, only Quebecers will know what this is!). There were dinosaurs everywhere! As we got there quite late, we stopped for a burger at Bernie & the Boys Bistro, and the food there was delicious. Someone even ordered the Mammoth burger, it was so impressive!
The next day, we started with a visit to the World's Largest Dinosaur, a 25-meter dino sculpture that you can climb to get a view of the city. Pretty cool thing! We also took a few pictures of the smaller dinos around, but didn't actually do the "dino walk" around the city. Most dinos looked really derpy and stuff...
Our second stop was the Atlas Coal Mine, a national historic site where you can wander around an old coal mine and take tours. We ended up getting the train ride and the unmentionables tour, so we learned a whole lot about the history not just of the mine, but also of the city of Drumheller. In the pictures (starting with the second) you can see: the last wooden tipple in Canada, some posters for health and safety, Joel with a random wheel, me with a huge wrench (might not look like it, but it weighed a ton), and Joel in the common showers where up to 4 miners would share a shower head... The last picture is the most fun. It was on the train tour, where our guide explained that kids as young as 8 years old would have to push the carts full of coal, so one poor kid was chosen to push a cart full of other kids. This might be the only time that child labour induced laughter!
After our tour on our way back to Drumheller, we made a little detour to check out the tiny tiny town of Wayne, which has a Guinness World Record for the most bridges within the shortest distance. So we drove over the 11 Bridges of Wayne, and soon after we found a suitable campground to spend the night.
The next day was Canada Day! And we found the best way to spend the holiday: at the Royal Tyrrell Museum, the greatest dinosaur museum (probably) in the world! The first thing you see when you enter the exhibit hall are enormous and lifelike Albertosaurus, which sets the tone for the rest of the visit. ALL of the specimens we saw were incredible, as you can see in the pictures below. In the pictures: 1. The entrance. 2. Two Dimetrodons (I can't remember ever seeing fossils of those before). 3. A Carnotaurus skull. 4. A Gorgosaurus in a classic death pose. 5. The Albertosaurus at the entrance of the museum. 6. A very rare example of a fossilized stingray. 7. Joel making fun of a bucktoothed dinosaur.
Some fossil arrangements were so incredibly impressive, too! They were mostly fight scenes, as you can see in the first three pictures. There was a room full of impressive, full body specimens as with the Triceratops in the fourth picture. In the fifth picture is the most well-preserved nodosaur, found in Fort McMurray (Alberta), and which took the technician 6 years to prepare. In the last picture is Black Beauty, a beautifully preserved T-Rex skeleton with black bones, caused by the minerals surrounding it during fossilization. Absolutely stunning.
There was also a technician working on a turtle fossil, so she was able to explain to us how it works, how long it takes, etc. We also did the Dig Experience, and one of our two guides was, you guessed it, from Drummondville. 😲 So anyway, we walked over to a made-up dig site where we worked with the real tools of the trade, but had to hack away at concrete to get to the "fossils" (they were casts). Apparently it's illegal for anyone other than paleontologists to dig up fossils, so that's why we worked with casts. However, halfway through the activity, it started raining, so we finished the activity inside, where because we were not on the floor, we could actually work with real fossils this time! So we got the best of both worlds. 😄
And that was that for the ultimate dinosaur experience! The next day would be on the road again, but that's for another blog. Stay tuned, folks! 💜
TL;DR: We got to Drumheller, dinosaur capital (of the world?), and climbed the World's Largest Dinosaur. There was also the Atlas Coal Mine to visit, which was a lot more fun than expected, and we drove over the 11 Bridges of Wayne, Guinness World Record for the highest concentration of bridges in the shortest distance. The best experience of all was at the Royal Tyrrell Museum, the most amazing dinosaur museum of all times, where we saw some exquisite specimens and even tried our hand at digging up fossils!
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