2012/07 Western Canada trip - Tyrrell Museum |
|||||
The actual Tyrrell Museum is in Drumheller and that was our next stop. As you’d expect, the main focus there is on the dinosaurs, of which they have plenty, but the route through the museum took us through all the geological ages that involved fossils, an exhausting day of education. The place was busy and collisions were frequent, with people gawping up at giant skeletons or looking down into reef exhibits.
For completeness, the museum had fossils from all over the world, but there were plenty from Western Canada, many from places we’d visited in the past: Dinosaur and Drumheller of course, Yoho, Tumbler Ridge, and even Dry Island 
Buffalo Jump, our planned campsite for that evening.
The trouble was that none of our maps were precise as to where it is! We had to trust the GPS, which took us around the east and north 
sides before bringing us to a single track farm road a bit narrower than the truck. We’d passed a couple of old park service signs with the arrows removed so I was having a bad feeling about this park. Luckily we didn’t meet any tractors and we eventually came out to a grassy field high above another stretch of the Red Deer River. This was where the Indians used to drive herds of bison off the cliff, similar to the place we’d visited last year, the Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump, also in Alberta. This park was very low key by comparison, with just a few signs to read.
The road down to the river was gated off. Too slippery in the rain, so all we could do there was look at the view, which was unusually lush and green for Alberta. It would have been a great spot to camp, but the campground is about fifteen miles away and one of the local farmers had already driven into the field to make it clear that the “no camping’ rule would be enforced (unless we paid to camp in his field, of course.)
The Tolman Bridge campground is also in the Red Deer River valley and it had some nice secluded sites by the river but we’d had enough of those! We opted for the most exposed site away from trees and in the wind. We were right on the edge of the Badland formations and away from the worst of the bugs.
Sandie and Karen and boys had visited Don and Barbara up in Olds. They were celebrating their golden wedding anniversary in early August but we weren’t going to be there, so this was an early celebration.