So, Monday we entered Alberta as soon as we left the rest area, where I now saw scrub range land rather than grassland. Also Alberta’s rest areas are truly terrible and I didn’t stop at any of them.
I was cruising along when I saw the sign for Provincial Dinosaur Park. OF COURSR I had to investigate… this is in the Alberta Badlands. Like the North Dakota Badlands but smaller.
The badlands are formed by glacial till that has since been eroded away by rivers. So up above its scrub brush, but then you go into a different world of truly bad land. Sorry pics are on my other camera, which I didn’t bother with on my day off (more on that below).
It was nice and cool on the morning but then got quite hot. Bella and I took some walks around the badlands and saw two in situ fossil displays, one an almost complete hadrosaur skeleton. Alberta badlands have produced enormous amount of late Cretaceous dinosaur fossils, which are now in museums worldwide. The history of the early 20th century “dinosaur rush” is fascinating. And I got to stand in the very spots where people quarried it out 100 years ago. The rock is so soft it’s hard to tell that humans cut it up not too long ago, it just keeps eroding…
The badlands had plenty of flies especially near the picnic are, where they were feasting on the dead bugs on my car grille. And. O shade. The trails were poorly marked and I got lost on them. I began to worry Bella might be overheating, and left her in a shady spot (shade from the fossil building) for a few minutes while I got the car. All ended well and Bella was (mostly) pooped out for the rest of the day.
We made it to my friends house in Red Deer around dinner time, and went out for an Indian feast. It was nice to eat a hot meal not tailgating, and we hung out and talked until I went to bed on his couch.
Red Deer (and also Calgary and Edmonton) are in the Parkland district, I believe. Not so far from the badlands, but suddenly there’s rain and trees and farms again. It looks like a park: grass with trees scattered throughout. Not unlike Colorado, and super pleasant. Except for temperatures around 30C every afternoon, the hottest experienced in this trip. But it is dry heat and the evenings get nice and cool.