Day 18 - Friday, October 4

It was brutally cold and windy this morning with a wind chill well below freezing so that was a perfect time to spend a few hours at the Royal Tyrrell Museum. It's a teaching, learning, working museum, one of Alberta's finest. I spent three years in university studying Anthropology and maintain an interest in dinosaurs, fossils, etc...a morning well-spent. All rather stunning.

Just barely come up to this guy's knee.

It is absolutely amazing what has been found and preserved for presentation and education.

You step on a big industrial scale and the screen displays what animal you weigh the same as. Karen is a cougar, appropriate I think. I am a mountain goat though if I keep climbing these hoodoos and rocks I'll be the one on the Simpsons who slips and falls off the mountain.  😅

During the early settler years legend has it that horses would disappear into these canyons of the Red Deer River valley to reappear later carrying a different brand, hence the name Horse Thief Canyon. It was very similar to Horseshoe Canyon from a couple of days ago but still astounding how it just appears. You don't even know it's there until you're in it.

The Bleriot Ferry crosses the river connecting the North and South Dinosaur Trail highways. When we arrived there was only one car on the ferry - it belonged to the ferryman. The hilarious thing is the river is twice the width of the length of the ferry. It's nice to see someone preserving history rather than destroying it, even if it does seem meaningless and unnecessary.

North of Drumheller is another ghost town, this one a little more accurate than Wayne yesterday. Rowley, a former railway town, has a population of 11, two houses at the end of the abandoned Main Street.

Tomorrow we say a fond farewell to Drumheller for 3 days in a cabin in Crowsnest Pass in Waterton National Park.   

😎