It was my third visit to the Royal Tyrell Museum. The first time I went, my aunt was visiting from the U.S. in 1987 and so we took her there. The second time, friends from the U.S. came for a visit in 1997, so we took them to Drumheller. This time, yesterday, we took Blaise and Acadia. Blaise has been crazy over dinosaurs for nearly a year, so it made sense to drive 80 minutes each way to the badlands and visit this world class museum. Both kids were so excited to go!
Drumheller is an odd place. It gives you the impression that the entire town is there simply because of the museum. You can't grow much there and it gets ridiculously hot there in the summer. The winters aren't mild either. But it is the site of a former coal mine, so the museum sort of saved this dying town. In fact the Midland Coal Mine is famous for the greatest mining disaster of the 1920s.
The museum is stellar. The exhibits are captivating. The kids wanted to race from one display to the next, but we managed to slow them down so we could enjoy the ancient skeletons.
I am not a paleantologist wannabe, never was. But I must say, the puzzle solver in me was drawn to the field more and more as I read about new discoveries and about how they painstakingly piece the dinosaur bones together.
We ran into friends from church and also friends from university that we hadn't seen in years. I wonder how many people I know are actually in Drumheller on the average day (except for Mondays - they're closed then).
Toward mid afternoon, Blaise and I went for a stroll on the loop through Midland Provincial Park. The Red Deer River snakes through this valley. You can see the many sedimentary layers since a glacier carved it out a while back.
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