Day in Drumheller

We woke up bright and early on Sunday, April 28th to drive about 2 hours northeast of Calgary to the badlands of Drumheller.  The Drumheller Valley is one of the premier dinosaur-fossil hunting places on Earth.  The first discovery, by James B. Tyrrell in 1884, was an enourmous skull of a predator, the Albertosaurus.  Paleontologists from all over the world have made Drumheller a center of study, and in 1985, the Royal Tyrrell Museum of Paleontology opened.  About 500,000 visitors come each year...and we were 6 of them for 2013!  :)

Our first stop was the Museum, which did not disappoint.  This is one of the best museums I have been to, and both of the kids loved it!  Ben was in dinosaur heaven...

The picture below is a large piece of Ammolite, a semi-precious gemstone primarily found along the eastern slopes of the Rocky Mountains.  It is made of the fossilized shells of ammonites.  In 1981, ammolite was given offical gemstone status, and it became the official gemstone of Alberta in 2004.  We saw a lot of ammolite jewelry for sale in Lake Louise, and it was beautiful!  Because the gemstone has so many colors, each piece is really unique!  (And really expensive...)

Below is "Black Beauty", one of the most significant T-Rex discoveries of its kind.  She was found by two teens on a fishing trip in southwestern Alberta, can you even imagine?  Preserved in very hard, light gray sandstone, the bones and teeth are shiny black, stained during fossilization by minerals. 

And just when I thought he was getting taller...I guess not compared to a dino leg!

How Do You Measure Up?  Well, she measures somewhere between a red fox and a coyote...  :)

GreeMa and PeePaw were so kind to treat the kids to some dinosaur goodies...

From the museum, we grabbed some lunch, and then it was off to the next attraction...the World's Biggest Dinosaur.  Standing outside the Drumheller Tourism Office, this T-Rex is about 4 times the size of an actual T-Rex.  Oh my!  For a small charge, you can climb up and stand in his mouth, getting a decent view of the town and the surrounding badlands.  I think the kids liked climbing all over his feet even better.  :)

A few miles outside of Drumheller are the Hoodoos.  The what??  Don't worry, that's what we thought too.  These hoodoos are formations that came about by millions of years of natural erosion of Alberta's sandstone landscape.  They are all over the province, but none so bizarre as the ones in Drumheller.  The local natives believed they were petrified giants who came to life at night.  Hmmmm.  I say they look like mushrooms.  Either way, they are protected by the provincial government, so there was fencing to keep us away from actually touching them.  But, it was awesome getting to see them up close and climb around and explore their surroundings.  Mushrooms or petrified giants, you decide...  :)

Spring has sprung, even at the Hoodoos.

Where's Nathalie you ask?  Snoozing.  I feel like I have a million pictures like this, of her sleeping in the car.  I guess I just want to have the proof someday when she asks in a whiny voice why she is left out of the fun.  :)

On the road again...three generations of Zabikow men.  Handsome bunch, eh?

One last stop at the Horseshoe Canyon before returning back to Calgary.  Yep, the canyon is shaped like a horseshoe which is how it got its name.  It was incredibly windy...I honestly was afraid to get too close to the edge for fear of being blown over!  Ben, though, was interested in a little Zabikow pasttime...throwing rocks.  He kept inching closer and closer to the edge, so Mom and Dad declared it was Twizzler time back in the car, in hopes of bribing him away.  Whew, it worked!  :) 

One last tidbit on Drumheller and their "other" claim to fame besides dinosaurs and hoodoos...the town has been used as the backdrop for movies such as Unforgiven (Clint Eastwood) and Shanghai Noon (Jackie Chan).  Alas, no celebrity sightings on our visit.

That evening, we did some celebrating...belated Mom's birthday, belated Moscow gifts, early Dad's birthday and early anniversary.  And of course, gift of all gifts, the Calgary Starbucks mug!!!  :)

It's hard to believe that 5 days of their visit have gone by already...I wish the time would slow down!!  But, there's much more fun to come...