Drumheller: Dinosaur Capital of the World

Drumheller

While Vulcan has embraced "Star Trek," Drumheller has adopted dinosaurs in a serious way.

The WLD towers above the community skate park & pool

Dinosaur fossils have been part of the Drumheller landscape since before they were even found by fossil hunters, but now the behemoths are above ground in a big way! Literally!

Drumheller is home to the "World's Largest Dinosaur," and it is really HUGE. It towers over the town; you can see it from everywhere.

There are also smaller (and that is a relative term since some of them are life-size) dinosaur statues, known affectionately as "Cementosaurs," all along the North and South Dinosaur Trails that border the Red Deer River. There are spotted dinosaurs, a miner dinosaur, a skeleton dinosaur, dinosaurs on benches eating ice cream, peeking around buildings... A Tyrannosaurus Rex head, teeth and all, was roaring out of the wall into the community center. And they are adding more of them every year.

Badlands Motel kitchen

In fact, if you don't see a dinosaur, you're probably not in Drumheller! 

I stayed two nights at the Badlands Motel, another "budget" spot, but it surprised me there was a kitchen, complete with a four-burner stove and oven (in addition to the microwave, refrigerator, sink and coffeemaker). There were even pots, pans, dishes and flatware to use! In particular, the freezer was amazing — I was able to freeze all of my water jugs, which I use as ice blocks in the Yeti if at all possible (much less messy). There was plenty of hot water, a bathtub, fat pillows and clean sheets.

The only thing I didn't like about the motel was that the windows didn't open, so if you wanted fresh air you had to open the door, which let the mosquitoes in.

Oh, and there was a screaming child and yippy dog next door, but, heck it was only for 48 hours, and I was working most of the time, anyway, and they did retire early. I suppose all that crying and barking made them tired! Might be considering Airbnb after this.

Petrified wood in a riverside park

Workdays & booknight

It was also nice to be able to spread out and work with (mostly) reliable wifi and power. I have become a power bee, circling around any power plug. For as long as I need to be connected to the computer, electricity will be my nectar.

After six weeks on the road, some things are getting easier. Robin and I had done some experimenting with different video connections so that I could remotely join our book club meeting, with the determination that Skype worked best for video chat.  It was mostly successful this time; some lag and pixellation, but far better than the FaceTime connection we had last month.

It was really fun to feel like part of the group, even if it was a little unnerving when my virtual self was be passed around via Robin's iPad, and I spent some time viewing the ceiling or people's crotches rather than their faces. Being in a group chat like this is different than sitting in front of a computer camera, but maybe we can work refining the technique next. I will celebrate the day when we can have holograms!

Yellow clematis?

Drumheller walks

In between working, yes, I did get out. The "dinosaur trails" are not just names of roads, they also are pretty paths along the river. The badlands in town here are every bit as impressive and colorful as those upstream in Dinosaur PP.

As with any walks, there are little surprises and fun things to see: people walking their dogs; yellow clematis (!!) growing wild; a pile of petrified wood (!!); squirrels chasing each other; and interesting memorials.

Entry sign for Drumheller's Angel's Corner

Angel's Corner was one such memorial. These small "corners, crescents, squares, circles" are being installed all over Canada to raise awareness about violence and abuse. The words on the sign, especially in light of the recent events in Orlando, resonated with me:

"Angel's Corner shines a light on the violence and abuse faced by individuals in our society. It stands as a reminder of individuals who have lost their lives to violence and that help is available. Angel's Corner is a place of reflection on the past and hope for a society free from violence against all."

Incidentally, the flags here in Canada have been at half-mast for the past week in memory of the Orlando massacre.

I also found the Drumheller Library; it's so new that it's not where N0MAD's navigation system thought it was. It's in a very large community center, along with aquatic center with indoor and outdoor pools, fitness center, meeting rooms, juice bar, chess tables, skate park, curling rink (yes, I'm in Canada), and more that I probably didn't discover. The town has a lot of pride and is spending money on community resources. (Aside: the library wifi required a password.)

Fossil exhibit — the background mural fleshes out the scene

Albertosaurus diorama

Royal Tyrell Museum

Oh. My.

I'm so glad that I went to the little Dinosaur Provincial Park museum before going here. This is an AMAZING place, and while I actually knew quite a bit about what was on display, seeing some of these fossil specimens really (excuse the pun) rocked my world.

Words really fail.

Original Albertosaurus fossil

They have exhibits with fossils. Big fossils, tiny fossils, bone-beds of many fossils.

They have fossils of skulls and complete skeletons of the plant-eating dinosaurs: ceratopsians with their fancy horns and frill collars; pachycephalosaurs (dome-headed); hadrosaurs.

They have exhibits of big dinosaurs (with muscles and skin) in their natural habitat, along with plants and smaller animals, including amphibians, insects and mammals.

Recently discovered fossil in a boulder

They have one room featuring new, unique and important finds. The exhibits here can change rapidly, based on what is coming in and being discovered. There were two that were particularly interesting to me.

One was a large boulder that had a fossil in it. This was found by a couple of fishermen in a river bed — they though it had tire tracks on it until they looked closer! It was so new that they have not removed the fossil from the rock yet, they just put it on display. It was really interesting to see something so unworked. In this case, it showed that anyone can find fossils in Alberta, you just have to be aware.

Bone lab

The second exhibit was a sample of amber that had a "proto-feather" in it (the researcher had been looking for something else, but found the feather). There are fossil collections at many museums and universities — items have been collected and catalogued, but not really studied, and new discoveries like this are being made by researchers all the time.

They have a big window into the Bone Lab, where specimens are being prepared.

And just when you think you are all done, you walk through the tunnel of time, which takes you back in time to the Paleozoic, with the first creatures that lived the oceans: ammonites, trilobites, crinoids, and remember those stromatoporoids? This is where they had a sample "porous" rock with these.

Undersea diorama 

They have very cool dioramas that make you feel like you are walking on an ancient reef or swimming with the fishes.

There is a huge room dedicated to one of the seagoing reptiles: Shonisaurus sikanniensis, the "Triassic Giant." The story of how it was removed from its discovery site to the museum for study is quite a tale, that they only allude to a little bit online. For instance, the skull alone weighed 4.5 tonnes, and the Sikorsky helicopter that they took it out with was only able to carry 5 tonnes... they just made it.

Cretaceous garden

They even have an indoor "Cretaceous Garden" where ancient plants are growing: ginko, dawn redwood, bromeliads, ferns of many types, mosses, lichens, magnolias, cannas, waterlilies, and a number that I didn't recognize. There are also frogs and amphibians in the ponds, and a lovely waterfall that keeps everything humid.

The exhibits slowly bring your forward, bit by bit, into the Mesozoic  to the Ice Ages.

It was unique and fulfilling and never have I been somewhere that has such a complete and cohesive collection.

I've read quite a bit on the development of life on earth, but these exhibits really carefully give so many good examples of the ebb and flow of life; of adaptations and extinctions; of how life changed as conditions changed. As one exhibit said, "You move, adapt, or die."

It was interesting to read some of the new theories about the extinction of dinosaurs: for instance one researcher thinks that dinosaur populations were already stressed and decreasing when the Chicxulub asteroid hit, and that it was only the coup de grace that did the dinosaurs in, not the primary reason for their demise.

Science is SO cool.

Anyway, I'm really, really glad that I took this big detour into the badlands these past couple of weeks. I would have loved to have spent more time here, but I had made an appointment to get the car's 15,000 mile service done in Calgary, so had to leave. 

Does this sound like a familiar refrain?

One of my outdoor "satellite" offices

It's not vacation, it's life

One of the things I commented to book club friends about was that this trip is not vacation, it's life. 

Usually when you go on vacation, it's for maybe one to three weeks. You get ready to go in a flurry of activity, then you go and while you're gone you DON'T do anything else. You don't take calls, you put an auto-responder on your email, you don't pay bills, and you enjoy your trip. You deal with things when you get back.

Cleaning the Yeti

This trip isn't like that.

Because I'm gone so long, I have to do shopping and laundry, mend clothes, and fix things; I have to attend to financial and personal matters (hopefully not medical ones), I need to keep in touch with people; in a word, I have to live my life doing all those normal things of life, but on the road as a nomad.

There's some adjustment. I mistakenly began the trip with the idea that this was going to be one long vacation with a capital "V." It's not.

It's life.

Now that I'm realizing that, I've adjusted those expectations so that the joy of waking up in a new place every day — or a place of my choice — is well worth the uncertainty of where I'm going to spend the night, and the added time it takes to do things, and the fact that I have to do them at all!

I'm learning that there is a pattern to towns and cities, but will write more on that some other time!

Signing off now in Calgary after writing this in the noisiest, most exuberant library I have ever been in. The guys at the desk across from me were doing an online test on insurance — lots of discussion back and forth. I never did find the letterboxes that were supposed to be there, but that's okay.

Something else wonderful will turn up tomorrow!