We’re Off To The Badlands!
We woke up quite early as our body clocks were still on Eastern Standard Time and therefore ahead of the current time. We got up about 7:30, showered, and went down for breakfast in the hotel dining room. It was buffet style and had a pretty wide selection of everything. Not bad:
We got back to our room, packed up, then checked out around 9:30 or so:
Time to hit the road for Drumheller!
We got slightly lost yet again leaving the hotel district but I got on to Airport Road, then on to the #2 with very little trouble. Time to hit the open highway! We turned on to Highway 72, then followed it on to Drumheller. Vince could not believe the open spaces of Alberta and the flatness of the land:
On the way to Drumheller we stopped at the Horseshoe Canyon, located about 17 km. from the town, and checked out the amazing landscape there:
As an aside, I feel compelled to mention the – shall we say… aromatic – outhouse at this site. There was the oddest sign posted inside of it:
Proceeding on, we made our way to Drumheller, going down the curving road into the valley and the amazing landscape of the Badlands:
We went to the Econolodge Drumheller to see if we could check in early (it was about 11:30 at this point) but the attendants were out cleaning the rooms. We waited for quite a while but no one came back so we left to get lunch as it was around Noon. After lunch we still had lots of time to kill before check-in at the hotel so we went to Fossil World on the Dinosaur Trail. It was great! We perused the store then paid the extra $8 to go through their Fossil World Museum, which had all the animatronic dinosaurs moving all over the place and howling… it was a riot!:
Leaving Fossil World we returned to the hotel about 1:30 to find the staff were now back from cleaning the rooms, so we could check in. We dropped our stuff in the room then walked downtown to the Tourist Information Centre which hosts the World’s Biggest Dinosaur:
We talked to some very friendly people at the Tourist Info place, then paid the $4 to walk all the way up inside the World’s Biggest Dinosaur to a viewing platform located inside the dinosaur’s jaws. What a view!:
After we came back down and left the Mighty Dino behind us, we wandered around downtown Drumheller and took shots of some of the cute dinosaurs Drumheller has put in place along its streets:
We also stopped at the memorial for Drumheller valley coal miners who have been killed on the job over the years:
About 5:30 we set out for Boston Pizza, as we had worked up an appetite with all the walking we’d been doing. When we got there we found they had closed at 3:00PM for a staff function. We then went next door to O’Shea’s but found that they had ALSO closed at the same time for a staff function!! WTF???!! Clearly both are owned by the same company. We weren’t sure where to go so we made our way back to the hotel, hoping there would be something promising in the neighbourhood. Directly across from our hotel there was an establishment called Vintage Kitchen & Bar, so we went in not expecting much – what a pleasant surprise. The food was amazing: Vince had the Lasagna with Caesar salad and I had the Lasagna. Absolutely delicious and highly recommended.
We finished our dinner and returned to the hotel at about 7:15. We just chilled for the rest of the evening and I got caught up on this journal. Off early to bed to rest up for another big day in the Badlands tomorrow!
That picture of Vincent in the sidecar, unforgettable