Drumheller

 A weekend meant that it was time for us all to go on a camping trip and this weekend our destination would be McLaren Dam Campground near Drumheller. 

The campground proved to be a little tricky to find, at least for some of us, and, having missed the turning for it from a very rural road we had some fun turning around with the trailer in tow. 

We finally made it to the campground to find it was very quiet - it was only our group there. There were no staff at the campground as it seems to be run by local volunteers/a local community and much of what goes on is be an honesty system. By now we are getting better at knowing our jobs to get set up.

View from our sites.....

Pelicans on the lake, there was quite a large flock of them but I couldn't get a decent enough shot of them.....

One or two motorhomes turned up onsite before the evening was out but it was soon time to turn in for the night.

Having had a decent nights rest the next day we headed down to Drumheller, the dinosaur capital of the world.The approach to Drumheller was quite unique as, even from a couple of kilometres away, there was no sign of the town in the distance. However we quite suddenly descended into a large valley in which the town is situated.

Our first stop was at the Royal Tyrrell Musuem that hosts a large selection of dinosaur skeletons, bones and associated fossils. It was an interesting couple of hours though I have to say I cannot agree with their science 'proving' that the dinosaurs lived 70 million or so years ago and that the Earth is a billion years or more old.

After some lunch in the town of Drumheller we arranged to visit the Atlas Coal Mine before which we visited the Hoodoos! Each hoodoo is a sandstone pillar, around 5 to 7 metres tall, resting on a thick base of shale that is capped by a large stone. Hoodoos are very fragile and can erode completely if their capstone is dislodged. The protected Hoodoos site is a guaranteed spot to see Hoodoos but smaller versions of these sandstone giants can be found all over the Drumheller Badlands.

After some ices we headed down the road to the Atlas Coal mine for our final sightseeing trip of the day. The mine was another interesting visit and included a visit to part of the actual mine entrance although there are plans to open a much longer section of the (horizontal) mine entrance as well as various elevators, artifacts and visit to the showers! We were not warned but there was quite a lots of steps to tackle, it was quite a climb inside the elevator tunnel as well as on the cliff face to the mine entrance, several people in the group had to turn back as they were not able to do the climb, maybe we all should have been told about that before the tickets were purchased!