Alberta Badlands: Iced Effectively
Ryskie was out of town for the weekend on a gig in Ft. Mac. Courtney and I found ourselves with a car and an entire weekend to do something with it.
"So what are we goona do this weekend?" I asks her.
"To the Badlands!" she replies without hesitation and nodding emphatically.
To The Badlands. A geological wonder that pops up out of nowhere in the middle of Alberta, runs a stretch of about 40-60 km and ends just as abruptly. Within that stretch one comes across two canyons, the Royal Tyrrell (Dinosaur museum), the remains of the only coal mine still standing(in the region at least), a suspension bridge, hoodoos, Reptile world....
I got home from work on Friday, we packed a lunch for saturday, brewed some coffee for the drive and 1.2.3. go. allonsiez, vamoose, huzzah. We drove down to Blackfalds and stayed the night with my friend donkey/steve, played with his tarantula, ate cookie dough, and enjoyed a great sleep in his super comfy bed while he took the couch.
We left his place at about 9:30. We headed for the secondary hwy, figuring we'd get gas on the way, but that didn't work out, so after a bit of backtracking to Red Deer we were off once again. It was a nice quiet drive with the faint whispers of music coming from the laptop (we had neither the ipod nor the adapter for the car). The farmland started to roll a bit more as we came closer in proximity to the rockies. Courtney started getting a little impatient with excitement.
"Meaghan" she says to me. "Meaghan the land hasn't changed at all except that it's started to roll a little bit more. How far are we from the badlands?"
oh, about 20 minutes," I'z replies. "Just watch, it's goona go like this: farmland, farmland, farmland, badlands! just like that. You won't even be able to see them really and than suddenly the ground opens up and you'll be right in 'em. really. that's how it's goona go."
So now that I'd said it I hoped that's exactly what would go down, I couldn't rightly remember, I seemed to recall that it went something like that when I was a kid. one minute your driving with a farm on either side of you and the next minute you're driving down the sedimentary lines of 73 million years of history.
yep, it was beyond pretty cool. Courtney has never been and I hadn't been since I was knee high. We drove down to the Blioret ferry which was closed for the season and walked along the red deer river for a bit. We had obviously just disturbed a group of beavers busy getting the foundation of their dam built. there were traces of them all over. But we were getting ancy for dinosaurs and didn't stay long, We headed straight for the Tyrrell after that.
In Drumheller the streets are lined with Dinosaurs. They're in the parks, on the streets and climbing up the lamp posts. Outside the city hall they have a Tyrannosaurus Rex the size of a small apartment building.
We grabbed a coffee in the cafeteria of the museum and then went to start our adventure through time only to walk up to a sign that said no food or drink beyond this point. Blocked. it makes sense. We were just too excited at the time, we hadn't thought of it. So we perused the gift shop for a bit. I forgot that I was supposed to be finishing my coffee until Courtney said, "okay, let's go look at dinosaurs!" and so I downed a half cup by the refuse bin and this time there was nothing standing in our way.
It began with an informational exhibit where you learned about the different paleontologists who participated with the museum. Each exhibit had a synopsis of who they were and what their area of study was with examples of their work explained by them to us through an ear piece which courtney and I shared. (There seems to be a corrolation between paleontology and music as there were more than several that also did things like play in the alberta symphony, or take music theory in school before they began there studies into the world of ancient geology and dinosaurs).
Than we went through an exhibit of the carnivorous dinosaurs of alberta, which included the first Albertasaurus found in 18whatever by Joseph Tyrrell,
Joseph Tyrrell, a sickly Ontario resident who came from a wealthy family, studied law at U f T, but because of declining health was told by his doctor that he needed to move to a drier climate. His father spoke with his old friend Sir John A MacDonald, who suggested a survey job that was taking place in Alberta. Joseph's job was to measure the distance between things in paces and transcribe those distances onto maps. One day he's out walking paces and he trips over a dinosaur. A complete fossilized skeleton of an albertasaurus.
The hallway leading to the next exhibit, which I don't remember in any great detail because it wasn't as interesting, had pictures up on the wall with flashcards. I guess we were supposed to guess what the pictures were of and compare our answers to the ones on the flashcards, than through the less interesting exhibit to a video sponsored by imperial oil telling us all about the oil deposits, how they were formed, and acting as storage tanks had just been waiting for millions of years for us to come by and extract it. I think we learned less about geology and dinosaurs and more about lobbying and corporate interest on that one. and than it was back in time to the beginning.
Precambrian: a water wall. that's all there was in precambrian. It was probably the shortest exhibit we saw.
Cambrian: Some land, some insects.
The next one: Some birds
something inbetween: some stuff happens
Cretacious: DINOSAURS!!!! well actually, they weren't around right at the beginning of the cretacious period, their predessesors were. each one is sub categorized. Dinos (and mammals) showed up at about the same time later on in the run with the terrible lizards in the lead. We learned about the T-REX which was actually the size of a house (not a small apartment building) and about the various duckbills, also about how many different kinds of triceratops there were. raptors, which weren't very big, stegosaurus, we took a walk through the cretacious gardens and saw gold fish.
and than the age of mammals.
Mammoths were still around until about 600 A.D. I didn't know that.
We learned about the evolution of elephants which used to be the size of a farm pig. and also the early versions of wolves, dogs, bison, and deer.
It walks you out right into the gift shop.
We had a picnic in the back of the car and than carried on to the hoodoos. When we pulled off at the official hoodoo recreation area it didn't seem very impressive and I had memories of there being more and them not being in a monitored recreation area so we kept driving around the corner got onto a road that was obviously purposefully unmaintained for about half a kilometer to discourage people from driving down it, and than it smooths out again. It takes you to a stop sign in the middle of the formations. no roads, no traffic, no buildings, just a stop sign and a fence. A truck a ways on the other side of the fence had stopped whatever it was doing to make sure that we didn't decide to cross the invisible line. So instead we climbed around on the formations and picked sagebrush. We also watched a moose make it's way along the far side of the valley. Than we went back to the hoodoos and walked up the rock staircase that had been put there for us got confused, deviated off the unclearly marked paths, couldn't make sense of the map that had been provided, which was kind of funny cause the whole thing was probably the size of an executive penthouse.
We drove back aways and walked across the suspension bridge which went from Rossdale to the old mine workings across the red deer river. There is a sign that lets you now that the suspension bridge can only handle twenty people at a time and that the land on the northside of the suspension bridge is privately owned and that the old mine workings are very dangerous. When me and Courtney got to the other side we debated whether that sign essentially meant no trespassing or if it meant that the land was privately owned, dangerous and traversed at our own risk. In the end we decided that we weren't very concerned about legal reprecussions, but we were quickly losing daylight and courtney didn't want us to twist an ankle, break a leg or spend the night at the bottom of an unseen mineshaft, which I agreed was logical and reluctantly left the natural paths that zigzagged all over the place for another day.
Courtney was very satisfied with the whole day and said now it just needed to snow and everything would be perfect.
On our way home, we did not hit 2 deer or run over a little black and white cat in the middle of the road. We did drive through the first snow fall of the year from about ponoka to Edmonton.
"So what are we goona do this weekend?" I asks her.
"To the Badlands!" she replies without hesitation and nodding emphatically.
To The Badlands. A geological wonder that pops up out of nowhere in the middle of Alberta, runs a stretch of about 40-60 km and ends just as abruptly. Within that stretch one comes across two canyons, the Royal Tyrrell (Dinosaur museum), the remains of the only coal mine still standing(in the region at least), a suspension bridge, hoodoos, Reptile world....
I got home from work on Friday, we packed a lunch for saturday, brewed some coffee for the drive and 1.2.3. go. allonsiez, vamoose, huzzah. We drove down to Blackfalds and stayed the night with my friend donkey/steve, played with his tarantula, ate cookie dough, and enjoyed a great sleep in his super comfy bed while he took the couch.
We left his place at about 9:30. We headed for the secondary hwy, figuring we'd get gas on the way, but that didn't work out, so after a bit of backtracking to Red Deer we were off once again. It was a nice quiet drive with the faint whispers of music coming from the laptop (we had neither the ipod nor the adapter for the car). The farmland started to roll a bit more as we came closer in proximity to the rockies. Courtney started getting a little impatient with excitement.
"Meaghan" she says to me. "Meaghan the land hasn't changed at all except that it's started to roll a little bit more. How far are we from the badlands?"
oh, about 20 minutes," I'z replies. "Just watch, it's goona go like this: farmland, farmland, farmland, badlands! just like that. You won't even be able to see them really and than suddenly the ground opens up and you'll be right in 'em. really. that's how it's goona go."
So now that I'd said it I hoped that's exactly what would go down, I couldn't rightly remember, I seemed to recall that it went something like that when I was a kid. one minute your driving with a farm on either side of you and the next minute you're driving down the sedimentary lines of 73 million years of history.
yep, it was beyond pretty cool. Courtney has never been and I hadn't been since I was knee high. We drove down to the Blioret ferry which was closed for the season and walked along the red deer river for a bit. We had obviously just disturbed a group of beavers busy getting the foundation of their dam built. there were traces of them all over. But we were getting ancy for dinosaurs and didn't stay long, We headed straight for the Tyrrell after that.
In Drumheller the streets are lined with Dinosaurs. They're in the parks, on the streets and climbing up the lamp posts. Outside the city hall they have a Tyrannosaurus Rex the size of a small apartment building.
We grabbed a coffee in the cafeteria of the museum and then went to start our adventure through time only to walk up to a sign that said no food or drink beyond this point. Blocked. it makes sense. We were just too excited at the time, we hadn't thought of it. So we perused the gift shop for a bit. I forgot that I was supposed to be finishing my coffee until Courtney said, "okay, let's go look at dinosaurs!" and so I downed a half cup by the refuse bin and this time there was nothing standing in our way.
It began with an informational exhibit where you learned about the different paleontologists who participated with the museum. Each exhibit had a synopsis of who they were and what their area of study was with examples of their work explained by them to us through an ear piece which courtney and I shared. (There seems to be a corrolation between paleontology and music as there were more than several that also did things like play in the alberta symphony, or take music theory in school before they began there studies into the world of ancient geology and dinosaurs).
Than we went through an exhibit of the carnivorous dinosaurs of alberta, which included the first Albertasaurus found in 18whatever by Joseph Tyrrell,
Joseph Tyrrell, a sickly Ontario resident who came from a wealthy family, studied law at U f T, but because of declining health was told by his doctor that he needed to move to a drier climate. His father spoke with his old friend Sir John A MacDonald, who suggested a survey job that was taking place in Alberta. Joseph's job was to measure the distance between things in paces and transcribe those distances onto maps. One day he's out walking paces and he trips over a dinosaur. A complete fossilized skeleton of an albertasaurus.
The hallway leading to the next exhibit, which I don't remember in any great detail because it wasn't as interesting, had pictures up on the wall with flashcards. I guess we were supposed to guess what the pictures were of and compare our answers to the ones on the flashcards, than through the less interesting exhibit to a video sponsored by imperial oil telling us all about the oil deposits, how they were formed, and acting as storage tanks had just been waiting for millions of years for us to come by and extract it. I think we learned less about geology and dinosaurs and more about lobbying and corporate interest on that one. and than it was back in time to the beginning.
Precambrian: a water wall. that's all there was in precambrian. It was probably the shortest exhibit we saw.
Cambrian: Some land, some insects.
The next one: Some birds
something inbetween: some stuff happens
Cretacious: DINOSAURS!!!! well actually, they weren't around right at the beginning of the cretacious period, their predessesors were. each one is sub categorized. Dinos (and mammals) showed up at about the same time later on in the run with the terrible lizards in the lead. We learned about the T-REX which was actually the size of a house (not a small apartment building) and about the various duckbills, also about how many different kinds of triceratops there were. raptors, which weren't very big, stegosaurus, we took a walk through the cretacious gardens and saw gold fish.
and than the age of mammals.
Mammoths were still around until about 600 A.D. I didn't know that.
We learned about the evolution of elephants which used to be the size of a farm pig. and also the early versions of wolves, dogs, bison, and deer.
It walks you out right into the gift shop.
We had a picnic in the back of the car and than carried on to the hoodoos. When we pulled off at the official hoodoo recreation area it didn't seem very impressive and I had memories of there being more and them not being in a monitored recreation area so we kept driving around the corner got onto a road that was obviously purposefully unmaintained for about half a kilometer to discourage people from driving down it, and than it smooths out again. It takes you to a stop sign in the middle of the formations. no roads, no traffic, no buildings, just a stop sign and a fence. A truck a ways on the other side of the fence had stopped whatever it was doing to make sure that we didn't decide to cross the invisible line. So instead we climbed around on the formations and picked sagebrush. We also watched a moose make it's way along the far side of the valley. Than we went back to the hoodoos and walked up the rock staircase that had been put there for us got confused, deviated off the unclearly marked paths, couldn't make sense of the map that had been provided, which was kind of funny cause the whole thing was probably the size of an executive penthouse.
We drove back aways and walked across the suspension bridge which went from Rossdale to the old mine workings across the red deer river. There is a sign that lets you now that the suspension bridge can only handle twenty people at a time and that the land on the northside of the suspension bridge is privately owned and that the old mine workings are very dangerous. When me and Courtney got to the other side we debated whether that sign essentially meant no trespassing or if it meant that the land was privately owned, dangerous and traversed at our own risk. In the end we decided that we weren't very concerned about legal reprecussions, but we were quickly losing daylight and courtney didn't want us to twist an ankle, break a leg or spend the night at the bottom of an unseen mineshaft, which I agreed was logical and reluctantly left the natural paths that zigzagged all over the place for another day.
Courtney was very satisfied with the whole day and said now it just needed to snow and everything would be perfect.
On our way home, we did not hit 2 deer or run over a little black and white cat in the middle of the road. We did drive through the first snow fall of the year from about ponoka to Edmonton.