Ah, Alberta!

We have finally arrived in Alberta, the Canadian province where we anticipate spending the rest of the summer. Tonight we are in Drumheller, location of the Royal Tyrrell Museum where Peter spent a few weeks during his Watson Year in 2012. We will visit the museum tomorrow.

http://www.tyrrellmuseum.com

We are happy to be in Alberta. 

Medicine Hat, AB, boasts that they have the largest tepee in the world. There it is!

Alberta continued the tradition of large wheat farms, but Alberta's were more attractive to us, I think because the landscape has more rolling hills. We exited the Trans-Canada highway, which runs east and west, just after lunch and headed north on a provincial road through farming country.

Alberta's wheat fields share the land with wind turbines and...

oil drilling. In fact, we saw more oil fields in Alberta, by far, than we saw in either Manitoba or Saskatchewan.

Lovely rolling countryside and...

wheat fields.

We almost titled this blog "3rd Badlands." We, of course, knew about the badlands of South Dakota because the Badlands National Park is located there. But then we travelled to North Dakota and learned that Theodore Roosevelt National Park was in the "badlands." Today the road we took north was called the Badlands Highway and Drumheller is considered in the "badlands."

Yup, looks like the badlands.

Right outside of Drumheller. Explain to me again why the names are always in this order?

Drumheller is in the badlands of the Red Deer River Valley, surrounded by one of the riches dinosaur fossil deposits in the world. The town is all about dinosaurs.

Billed as the largest dinosaur in the world, this larger-than-life (84 ft.) version of a tyrannosaurus rex dominates the downtown.

There is a very nice 18K pathway running alongside the Red Deer River through the center of town.  Frederick and I followed Morris, the Hike-asaurus, eastward along the river.

It was a perfect late afternoon and the young children were enjoying the wading pool in the park.

Along the Red Deer River.

More badlands along the river.

The mosquitos weren't too bad as long as we kept moving.

There is actually a viewing platform in the dinosaur's mouth. Maybe tomorrow we'll do that.

The older children enjoyed this "spray" park and didn't seem bothered by the huge dinosaur

 poised to ....