Saturday, June 27, 2009

Day 4 - Dinosuar Provincial Park(The Canadian Badlands)



Well, we got going fairly early for the Bradley's - we had to go to the Concession building to change our US dollars into Canadian money. In order to use the showers, we needed 2 "loonies" - that's the American equivalent to $2.00 - but in coin form. We exchanged enough money so we could shower today and tomorrow. For 2 loonies, we got a 5 minute shower - Allison's shower went from hot to cold to hot and she ended up needing 4 loonies! Scott and Laurie were both successful with just the 5 minutes! After showering, we went out to explore the Dinosaur Provincial Park. You would never know this place is even here unless you read about it in the Triple A guidebook or on the Internet! However, it is an extremely cool place. You have all this flat, rolling plains-land, and then suddenly, you are in a hot, arid area with strange landforms. We took in 2 self-guided walking tours. First we went on the "Badlands Trail". This took us on a loop where we saw hoodoos and various land formations. Don't know what a hoodoo is? (Neither did we! But imagine a rock formation with a tepee shaped bottom with a large rock formation balanced on top - created through erosion.) From there we went on the "Trail of the Fossil Hunters". This hike took us through an area in which large fossil beds were first discovered around the turn of the century. There were 2 display "houses" on the hike that showed some of the fossils discovered in this area. After this, we decided to head to the visitors center and check out the museum area and signed up for an "interpretive" 2 hour bus tour. The museum was cool. Scott and Laurie checked out the displays while Allison slept in the travel van! Then at 2PM we all boarded the bus for our "Badlands Bus Tour". This was advertised as ,"a 2 hour bus ride, led by a park interpreter, into the badlands to see what makes Dinosaur Park unique: unforgettable landforms, dinosaur remains and wildlife!" We had a VERY PERKY tour guide/bus driver named Corrie. She taught us about the park and even called on audience participants to act out "how a dinosaur fossil is made ",(requiring a guy to fall on the ground and act like a dead dinosaur) and "how the glaciers caused the stunning landforms in the area" (requiring 4 people to act as glaciers moving forward and backwards across the plains 75 million years ago). Believe it or not, both Allison and Scott grabbed Laurie's hands so she WOULD NOT be a volunteer! It was an interesting tour, but if looks could kill, Allison would have taken Laurie out by the first bus stop! After returning to the visitor's center, we headed down for a bite to eat. It had been SO windy today, that we were totally exhausted - we didn't even buy more wood for an evening fire - it was that windy (There were 15 mph winds with gusts up to 30 mph - so glad I fixed my hair)! We hunkered down in the travel van and watched a DVD on the computer - isn't technology great? Tomorrow - on to Banff!

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