They day before the Calgary Stampede Dan and I took an excursion to the Royal Tyrrell Museum. We had an extra day in Calgary and there wasn’t much drawing our attention in town. During our trip I had been reading Jurassic Park to Dan while he was driving . . . the few times during boring scenery. Therefore, we had dinosaurs on our minds and the information advertising this museum kept popping up.

The Royal Tyrrell Museum houses one of the largest collections of dinosaur skeletons in the world. While there we saw a presentation about dinosaurs in the movies and in many ways it was an interesting history of special effects in film. The museum was impressive. We spent much time exploring the various rooms. There was also a special exhibit on Darwin that was fascinating. I don’t think Dan had known how much his wife was into dinosaurs as a child until we visited this museum. Stegosaurus was always one of my favorites (I don’t really know why), so I had to include the pic above.

Dan is posing with the SuperCroc skull. Just the skull is 1.7 meters long! We saw so many skeletons and interesting displays. I was surprised the museum allows photography. It was cool at first, but then became annoying as I not only had to decide which pictures to take, but had to dodge everyone else taking their photos.

Here I am posing with leg bones from something very, very big. I don’t remember if it was a brachiosaurus or an apatosaurus, but I do recall that there was a computer monitor nearby showing a mathematically generated model of the dinosaur in motion. Just think, in my other other life I could have been using Mathematica to study biomechanical paleontology.

We learned that the albertosaurus was discovered in the Canadian province of Alberta in the region near the museum. An albertosaurus is pictured below towering over a centrosaurus. I did not know that there was an entire family of dinosaurs similar to the triceratops called ceratopsians. In another section was a mammoth skeleton. Can you see both sabertooth cats about to attack?

Driving to Drumheller was so different than what we had been seeing on previous drives. On this side of the Rockies everything was so flat. We passed through a lot of farmland dotted with few barns and houses. Arriving at Drumheller was a change when a vast river valley just opened dramatically within the flat land. This area was known as the Badlands and many dinosaur skeletons have been excavated here. They had a trail through the area with some sites marked. We enjoyed the chance to stretch our legs. Also different was the dry heat after the rainy, chilly days of Jasper. 

The museum is about 90 minutes outside of Calgary near a town called Drumheller. Basically the entire economy of Drumheller seemed to revolve around dinosaurs and dinosaur gimmicks. All around the town were dinosaur statues and murals on the sides of buildings. I particularly liked the themed dinosaurs outside of shops like the drug store (note the bandages) and the one parked outside of the fire station (below). We could not help but notice the humongous green and yellow tyrannosaurus rex just outside the visitor center. We had to check it out. After paying a small fee, we climbed 106 stairs to the top of the 86-foot tall, far beyond life-size monster. Looking out was nearly as dizzying as the Calgary Tower, especially since heavy movement made the jaws shake. Can you see Dan by the “?”?

On our way back to Spokane from Calgary we took a slightly alternate route to check out another tourist attraction: the Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump. We had found this in our guidebook. Here there is a cliff above the plains where the Native Americans would create drive lanes with rocks and branches and stage an elaborate scenario that would cause a herd of buffalo to stampede unable to stop before falling over the edge of the cliff. One run could produce a kill of thousands of buffalo and provide food and materials for a long time. Researchers believe this site was used for about 5,000 years.

We visited the museum, walked to the cliff’s edge, and took a short hike near its base. By the way, it is not called “Head-Smashed-In” because of the buffalo. A boy was found crushed after a buffalo run because he wanted to watch from under the cliff.

On the way here we saw our last new wildlife, Richardson’s ground squirrels. Okay, so they were just gophers. They kept running across the highway while we were driving. Unfortunately, there was one casualty. Kerthump!

Driving along on the final leg of our journey back to Spokane, we noticed a mountain that looked like half of it was missing. There had clearly been an tremendous land slide. As we came closer and saw the side of the road opposite the mountain, we could see rolling hills of rocks and boulders that had clearly come from the mountain.

There was a turnout from the highway and an informational sign that labeled this as the Frank Slide. It happened in 1903 and killed many people in the town of Frank and wiped out a coal mine, although some of the buried miners managed to tunnel their way to the surface. The section of limestone that fell was over one kilometer wide. The vast field of boulders looked like how I imagine the surface of the moon.

After putting nearly 2000 miles on our red rental, we crossed the border back into the United States. Even though we had a fantastic trip, it still felt good to be home.

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