Driving 1.5 hours northeast from Calgary over the prairies, the landscape changes suddenly from rolling grassland and grain crops to dramatically eroded hilly layered sedimentary rock formations. These are Alberta’s Badlands, a rough inhospitable environment likely named by pioneers who found these “Bad lands” to cross with their wagons, and “Bad lands” or try to settle in.
There is a small town in this region, Drumheller, which is the heart of Alberta’s Badlands. Drumheller began as an important coal-mining center but today it’s best known as the “dinosaur capital of the world”, for the world’s largest deposits of fossilized dinosaur bones are found in the eroded Badlands landscape surrounding it.
Within the Badlands it’s common to see “hoodoos”, mushroom shaped eroded rock columns with a “head” wider than the body of the column. Several examples are found near Drumheller.
Drumheller boasts an impressive dinosaur museum – the Royal Tyrrell Museum, but that’s a subject for another day!
Very cool place to visit! With it also being so close to Calgary it can be your main focus of a vacation or just a stop on the way.
Hi Archie,
Welcome to TravelGumbo! Maybe sometime you can share with us some of the beautiful scenery in Saskatchewan.