After several days on the road, we decided we needed a mini family vacation in Drumheller, Alberta, to cheer up our little road warrior and have some fun!
What the heck is the fuss with Drumheller?
Haven’t heard of Drumheller? Drumheller is often referred to as “The Dinosaur Capital of the World”. It’s a small town about an hour northeast of Calgary on the Red Deer River in the badlands of Alberta. What are badlands, you wonder? They’re a type of landform where colourful sedimentary rock and clay-rich soil erode and are shaped by the wind to make deep, narrow crevasses and hoodoos (rock formations). The Canadian Badlands span across Alberta and Saskatchewan and down to the USA and are home to the largest amount of dinosaur fossils in the world!
Top things to do on your Vacation in Drumheller, Alberta:
-see the world’s largest dinosaur
-downtown Dino walk
–Royal Tyrrell Museum
-Hoodoos Trail
-Star Mine Suspension Bridge
–Atlas Coal Mine
-Horseshoe & Horsethief Canyons
-the Little Church
-ghost towns
-hikes
& so much more!
One thing our three year old is talking about nonstop these days, is dinosaurs. So, we decided to book two nights at Dinosaur RV Park (obviously for the name), to give us enough time to explore, decompress, and let Rocky have some good fun! We saw the World’s Largest Dinosaur, an 86-foot T-Rex, you can climb 106 steps inside to view the town from above. Instead, we opted to continue biking around town letting Rocky spot all the hidden dinos. They’re on benches, on store roofs, in parks. Rocky was in heaven on this real-life Dinosaur hunt!
Exploring the Hoodoos of Drumheller
In the afternoon we went out to see the Hoodoos! The hoodoos are really cool, sandstone and shale rock pillars with horizontal stripes of colour that take millions of years to form. Not only are they extremely picturesque, the area was super fun for Rocky to explore and climb. Having one arm in a cast did not hold him back at all! He loved climbing up high for landscape views from above and finding little “dinosaur caves” to hide in. It’s only about 15 minutes from town. There’s plenty of parking, and a little cafe/restaurant in the parking lot if you want to spend more time and do the hike and have a drink or snack after.
If you’re in the province, a perfect mini vacation for a family with kids in the “dinosaur phase” (or you just never grew out of it yourself), would be Drumheller, Alberta. It’s less than an hour north from the Trans-Canada Highway, and totally worth the detour!
