The Great (North) American Road Trip: Great White North Pt 3 (Calgary Area)

Drumheller, Alberta, Canada

We picked up a brochure for the Royal Tyrell Dinosaur Museum in Drumheller, which is about an hour northeast of Calgary. A little out of the way, but the brochure made the museum out to be amazing. Things were definitely looking up when we first pulled into the town of Drumheller.

Drumheller's claim to fame is that they are located in the badlands of Canada. This puts them in prime area for fossils, primarily dinosaur fossils. They have even made some new discoveries including the Albertosaurus, named appropriately for the province it was found. When we drove into the city the first thing we saw was a gas station and in the front was a dinosaur sculpture. It was a sweet Ankylosaur, which is the dinosaur that has the club on its tail and the armor surrounding its body. This was awesome enough, especially since it was painted pink and blue, but when we drove further into town there was one of these statues on every other block or so, and they were all different species.

The town was all about the dinosaurs. The community center had a playground and water park which was all decked out with dinosaur slides and Pterodactyl sprinklers. The seven year old in me was the happiest boy in the world, and the twenty seven year old me was the happiest big boy in the world. We could have turned around right then and it would have been worth it, but the museum was right around the corner.

The Royal Tyrell Dinosaur Museum is the best museum I have ever been to in my life. Although I haven't been to all that many museums, I have covered all of the ones in Washington D.C. as well as all the good ones in Manhattan along with a plethora of other ones. Everything about the place was great. The curators deserve a medal for the work they did setting it all up. They had some sweet life size 3D Albertosaurus sculptures and a re-creation of the past surroundings of the local areas. To follow that, they had on display one of the most complete skeletons of a T-Rex, which was left inside of the rock that it was found in. The fossil was excavated out about three quarters of the way, and the fossil and rock were on full display. That was followed up by a giant Triceratops skull among other fossils and really interesting information about them all.

The next big surprise was in the room that followed up the first two rooms of awesomeness. When we entered the room we had to wait for our eyes to adjust, as the lights were very dim. In the middle of the room was a nice full standing T-Rex skeleton. Along the walls were very interesting looking things hanging on the wall, but from far away it was hard to tell what they were. The whole room was set up much like an art gallery. There were framed fossils hanging on the walls with short summaries that read like artist descriptions. It was the most interesting and fresh way to display a science artifact that I have ever seen. There were even little Oviraptors (cousins to Velociraptors) up on pedestals like sculpture work. The whole presentation put to shame all other fossil and dinosaur displays.

The museum also had a viewing area where you can watch paleontologists work on specimens and clean fossils in real time; via cameras and a viewing workshop that was actually a working space and not just a show presentation. Unfortunately, there was no one working at the time we were there, maybe they all had the day off.

Following those rooms was agreat display on Charles Darwin and Evolution. The museum even had a third printing of The Origin of Species. It was a nice set up and had a ton of information in the small space it was allotted, as it was a special exhibition that was not part of the normal museum.

Our next journey through the museum was a walk through time as it was set up in sections based on the various periods, starting with the Precambrian. It was really cool to see the various organisms and animals that lived during the different eras. Each era showcased fossils and displays of the various species. This went all the way up into the ice age and was full of displays of mammals and mastodons and all sorts of good things. After spending the good part of the day, which was about four or so hours, it was time to eat. I could have easily spent four days straight just reading and looking at all of the stuff there. If you are ever remotely close to Calgary or even just in Alberta, you need to visit this place. I recommend it to the highest degree.

Calgary, Alberta, Canada

The drive down was a nice view of Canada's farmland. They say that Calgary and its surroundings is kind of like the Texas of Canada. There were many ranches and surprisingly a lot of what seemed to be chamomile fields. There were seas of yellow embedded into the green stems, which were of great contrast to the sky. The countryside was very pretty and the drive down to Calgary was very enjoyable.

Calgary was a cool city, as it was more spread out and not as congested as downtown Vancouver was. We drove around looking for some thrift stores and things to do around the city. We found a Value Village and took to finding some interesting merchandise. You can learn a lot about a place by looking at the things they donate. I found a bunch of cowboy hats and they had a whole rack of hockey jerseys. It's an interesting cross section into what the people in the area value and also to see what the fads were. Visiting these thrift stores has been like a study course in culture and anthropology. We searched for some postcards but came up empty. On the whole Jen got a t-shirt that said Canada on it and picked up a souvenir for someone.

After hanging out for a little bit longer we started our drive towards the border. We drove and drove and made a pit stop in the town of Claresholm and ate at a Canadian fast food type of joint called Tim Horton's. We knew very little of the place, but they were everywhere in Canada, so we figured it must be something good. We walked in and immediately it wasn't what we expected. It turns out, that Canadians love donuts. They love them so much that at Tim Horton's, when you order a sandwich, no matter what time of day it is, your side order is a donut. A donut…Not fries or potato chips, but a donut. You can also substitute a muffin for the donut, which I gladly did, chocolate chip of course. The lady behind the counter was surprised we had never eaten there before until we told her we were from Las Vegas.

Jen received her egg salad sandwich with soup and I got my chicken salad sandwich with muffin from the other guy behind the counter. He then asked us where in Vegas we were from. Turns out that he lived in Vegas for about a year and we struck up a little conversation about our trip, as he asked what we were doing way up there in Canada. This led to us saying we were going to land in Jersey and he said at least you got the devils to root for. This is when Jen popped her jacket up a bit and showed him, her Capitals sweatshirt. He scoffed, as did I, and I told him I was a Rangers fan. This led to a nice discussion of the previous playoffs. We argued a bit about our favorite teams and after the friendly tuffs, we ended on the good note in which all of us were happy that the Blackhawks won.

Our night concluded as we made it to the US border a bit after midnight. The lady at the booth was fairly unpleasant, which is understandable wince working the graveyard shift at the border seems like it would be fairly crappy. She could be digging ditches in the desert heat, though. Anyways after a series of condescending and ridiculous questions, we were allowed to enter back into our country.