Medicine Hat, Alberta

World's Tallest Teepee

Drumheller's wonderful dinosaur museum

Murray is dwarfed by the dinosaur leg

Visitors can see the staff working on specimens

A close-up view of working on a specimen - see TV screen above

Drumheller Hoodoos

Bryce Canyon Hoodoos - Utah 2008

Come back Mama Moose

At 7.30am we pulled out of our north of Calgary campground whispering last goodbyes to our Alaska travelling mates. Our 8 week Alaskan adventure had come to an end. I could go on forever using numerous adjectives to describe the wonderful time we had, but I am sure the blogs along the way have conveyed my feelings adequately.

A chap from Quebec who we had met at Dawson City suggested we should visit the town of Drumheller, Alberta about 90 mins NE of Calgary. This is the heart of the Canadian Badlands, and also where there are ongoing numerous dinosaur fossil finds along the Red Deer River where old glacial activity preserved the dinosaurs where they fell. We really enjoy the Badlands scenery in North & South Dakota, so decided we should visit the Canadian version. The drive was very pleasant through miles of agricultural and beef grazing land. The Badlands here didn't seem to have as much of the pink/red scoria layers as do the ones in Dakota, although the Hoodoos (unusual rock formation) gave them an interesting touch. The best Hoodoos we have seen were in Bryce Canyon, Utah – they were amazing as there were so many of them in one place I guess, but these ones have more unusual shapes.

We took the opportunity to spend some time looking at the wonderful exhibits in the Royal Tyrrell Museum a few kms north of the small town of Drumheller. It had an amazing display of fossils, and lots of interesting exhibits for students & kids. They even had large monitors showing the paleontologists at work on various specimens. Such painstaking work to preserve the fossil finds.

We continued on our way to Medicine Hat, Alberta. This is the home of the world’s tallest tepee (stands 20 stories high), which was created for the 1988 Winter Olympics in Calgary and re-assembled here in Medicine Hat as a symbol of Canada's native tribes in this area. The city was much bigger than we expected, with a population of around 60,000. Due to the natural gas reservoirs underground, it is also known as Gas City. We called into the visitors’ center and the staff member we encountered was actually an aussie from Melbourne who had been working here for 7 years. He suggested we try the nicest campground in the area, and we were glad we did. Nice shady trees (the warm weather has finally caught up with us), and the fastest wifi of the whole trip. Whoo hoo. As soon as we pulled in, we hooked up, then set up our chairs outside and just sat there enjoying the ‘aura’. We had one last bottle of beer and one last glass of red wine in our stocks, so we combined that with a lovely lime salsa dip and corn chips, and we plotted the next day’s travel. It seemed very lonely without Marie & Eric in the adjoining site…come back Mama Moose & Sharp Shooter!