Retroblogging the megatrip: part 4b

I'm going to open this post with two amazing Leo quotes.

{while waiting at the border in Sarnia, next to a carful of girls} "Who doesn't love girls? Yeah!"

{while listening to "Gangnam Style"} "No one is sexy in the world. Except robbers that are girls. They are sexy." (Prior to this quote, I wasn't sure anyone in the back seat of our van knew what "sexy" meant. Leo might still not have known, but if so, that's a pretty fine guess)
OK, fine, two Leo quotes and this picture of a dude at the rest stop making his own shade for a nap in the middle of the parking lot.

So with Saskatchewan and rain and half of Alberta in the rearview mirror, everyone in the van woke up mid-afternoon on June 24th wondering where we were. We had cut northwest off the TransCanada Highway and were essentially driving on paved, two-lane roads through a bunch of fields. And then…we came over a rise and the badlands opened up before us. I had forgotten what it was like to come upon the striated canyon so suddenly. Green fields…brown and red rock walls running north-south as far as you can see. We cut south and pulled off in Rosedale to walk across the Star Mine suspension bridge (two bridges in two days!!).

After the bridge, we carried on to Drumheller to climb the world's largest dinosaur. Check this thing out (below)! Henry is standing at the bottom for scale. The boys were a little burnt out by the time we got back down (a lot of stairs!), but the view was pretty awesome. And I got to change Henry's diaper in the dinosaur's mouth.

Our other stop in Drumheller was to check into our nasty motel for the night. In retrospect, this was probably one of the two worst places that we booked for lodging. The one thing it did not have on the other nasty place was price. The one thing it did have on the other place was a lack of drunk people inquiring about the hourly rates. Yeah! This picture below is evidence of the sketchiness. I present to you - the motel's towel, er, rag reuse program!

Due to the fact that we drove so far the previous day, we actually had a few hours of daylight left and chose to take full advantage. We hopped back in the van, drove back past Rosedale and went to visit the hoodoos. The hoodoos are these bizarre rock formations that form as a result of erosion. There is a spectacular cluster of them behind fencing that people are asked to not disturb, but the rest of the area is open to exploration…at your own risk. And it was risky. This was maybe the tensest stretch of time for me as a parent: I was outnumbered and the kids were feeling invincible and my heart was in my throat for 30 solid minutes. I think in the end, only one child slipped, but was caught in time to avoid injury. An age-old lesson was also reinforced at the hoodoos - try to avoid doing something for just one child as the rest will also want said something and will submarine whatever you're doing until "fairness" is restored. In this case, "that thing" was referring to one of the children as "Hoodoo Master". Well, eventually they just all had to be "Hoodoo Masters", which made them feel more invincible and then it was definitely time to book it before someone died. The best part had to be the drive back to Drumheller as rain started to sprinkle just as we left the parking lot - rumour has it that things get really slick on the hoodoos when it gets wet so we timed things just right. Thankfully it was just a sprinkling. After the kids were all in bed, I was told that I was still pretty tense and that it was time to go blow off some steam at the bar across the street. So I got to wrap the day on fried mac 'n cheese, beer and World Cup soccer. My wife is the best.

Oh, whoops. I forgot to mention that things did actually end on a sour note. For Henry. Holly and I were snickering (maybe a bit too much), but Henry completely lost his gourd because he absolutely needed to go to the top of the cliff face. Here is some of the evidence:

The next day, we brought the kids to the sparkling jewel of Drumheller (sorry, Drumheller, but there's not much sparkling about you these days. Those dinosaur statues in the downtown area need some serious TLC!): the Royal Tyrell Museum of Palaeontology. Boys like dinosaurs. This museum has dinosaurs. Therefore, boys like this museum, right? Yep. Totally nailed this one. I think we ended up spending roughly 4-5 hours on site and every one had a blast. The biggest hits were some of the dioramas that kids turned into an I-Spy game, the display on spores where you could use pressurized air tubes to fire little white "spore balls" at other people, (for people who could read) the exhibit on 25 great local moments in palaeontology, the tropical room that featured some very old species of plants, a fairly irreverent movie about how fossil fuels are made, and the underwater diorama featuring the Devonian reef. There was also the Palaeo Play Park outside, a very cool playground/jungle gym-type thing where we could picnic and burn off the last iotas of energy. Even the hyper-aggressive ground squirrels were entertaining…at least until they started feeling entitled to our lunch! BACK OFF! Holly gave one of them a needed kick at one point under our picnic table and it went airborne. Here are some pictures from our visit.

Whoof! That's a lot of pictures. And another 470 clicks on the van bringing the running total to 3,949 km PLUS all of the detours and local driving done in places where we stopped (in fact, we crossed the 4,000 km mark somewhere near where Max got THE SLIVER). Next up, my happy place: the Canadian Rockies!