Alberta road trip, Post 6: The Badlands

On Friday, Linda and her friend Susan took us on a fantastic sightseeing road trip. In the morning, we drove 2.5 hours south-east of Red Deer, leaving behind the flat green farmland and entering Alberta's Badlands (cue spooky music). The topography of this area will be best revealed through our photos (further down in this post) rather than words. It's very stark, with visible layers of colour (tan, brown, maroon) in small round hills, few if any trees, and sparse and sturdy vegetation (spiky grass, cacti etc). I really loved it as it was so different and unexpected!

We came upon the Badlands suddenly, dropping from beautiful lush farmland down into a valley the Red Deer River flows through, and from the valley onwards the land was as described above. We crossed the river on a small ferry/barge - I still can't believe a man's entire job is to steer that ferry back and forth across a 30- or 40m-wide river all day long, for just a couple of cars each time! But I just read that the Bleriot Ferry has been in operation since 1913 and is one of the last sailing ferries still used in Canada, so I guess preserving the past is the reason for not simply building a bridge. :)



After crossing the river, we came across this tiny little roadside church that seats 6 people. It's not used regularly and is a bit battered by the elements (and tourists), but some other people who stopped there just after us said that they had friends who renewed their vows in it!



Our road trip destination was the Royal Tyrrell Museum of Palaeontology at Drumheller. This is one of the world's leading palaeontological research centres, and due to being located in the part of Canada where more dinosaur species have been discovered than anywhere else in the world, it has a collection of over 120000 dinosaur fossils. Before checking out the museum, however, we did the museum's Badlands Interpretive Trail walk. These photos should give you a good idea of what Alberta's Badlands look like, as explaining its various features was the purpose of the trail...

This is the Royal Tyrrell Museum:

The view from the trail:

Us with Linda (left) and Susan:

And with Linda in front of some hoo doos (more to come on these):

After the walk, we ate a yummy picnic lunch (courtesy of Linda) before heading into the museum.



The Royal Tyrrell Museum was quite interesting and well worth a visit. We saw lots of fossils, read lots of information, and watched the museum's palaeontologists hard at work in their laboratory. My favourite exhibit was an enormous fossilised shell about a 1m wide and vibrantly colourful. The only [non-human] living creatures we saw in the museum were a glass tankful of Giant Tropical Cockroaches over 2 inches (5cm) long!! Oh, and a spider or two I think, but the cockroaches are what have stuck in my memory...







As we were leaving the museum, I bought a postcard that pictured a group of hoo doos, and as I was fascinated by them we asked the museum staff where we could find them. It turned out they were not far away, so we set off on a hoo doo hunt, and on the way we stopped in the town of Drumheller for some ice cream and a quick squiz at the "World's Largest Dinosaur" (Drumheller's claim to fame). You can climb up inside it to a viewing platform in its mouth, but we gave that a miss this time. :)



Then, on to the totally awesome hoo doos! Here's a quick explanation: "Hoo doos are eroded pillars of soft sandstone rock, topped with a resiliant cap. The cap protects the softer rock underneath from eroding as quickly as the surrounding rock". At the site there was a museum official keeping watch to make sure people behaved themselves - we could walk amongst the hoo doos but not climb on them, for obvious conservation reasons. Here they are - slews of hoo doos for you!











Other people were climbing all the way to the top of the hill in the background of the photo below. We weren't quite that energetic (it was a hot day!), but Linda and I left the two even less energetic ones at the bottom and walked part of the way up, until it started feeling slippery. :)





After we had sufficiently photographed and admired the hoo doos, it was time to start heading back to Red Deer. What a great day - thanks Linda and Susan!!

To view more of our Alberta road trip photos:
Click here to go to the album overview page.
Click here to start the slideshow where this blog post begins (Friday).