Across Canada Roadtrip, Alberta Part 1

Hiking near The Star Mine Suspension Bridge

This May I had a wonderful opportunity to help my friend Sarah drive across Canada with her 2 daughters (both under 4). Sarah needed a hand moving from PEI to Red Deer Alberta and offered to pick me up on her way through New Brunswick. How could I pass up the special opportunity to help a friend and see our big and beautiful Canadian provinces. So since this was my first time seeing west of Ontario, I thought why not continue the journey past Alberta and make plans to travel solo to Vancouver.

We left the Maritimes at the end of April, during a very unseasonably chilly spring. We will soon find out that Canada in general had an unusually late start to spring, even Alberta still had hints of snow! This is my epic 20 day roadtrip across Canada, from east coast to west!

Alberta (Part 1), May 7-13, 2014

We made it to Drumheller Alberta by early evening and checked into our hotel for the evening. For those of you who are not familiar, this town is located in a river valley in east-central Alberta, often referred to as Dinosaur Valley. It really felt like another world out there, tall walls of layered sand in unusual shapes and an unmistakable dessert vibe. After a nice bite to eat at a corner restaurant, we enjoyed the warm spring evening outside around town. As it grew later I continued on and explored around town and visited the World’s Largest Dinosaur, a 86 ft high fiberglass Trex. The next morning we made our way to Star Mine Suspension Bridge and did a little hiking off the beaten path up to a fantastic view of the river and badlands. We then took the kids to the Royal Tyrrell Museum of Palaeontology where we in aw of their collection of more than 130,000 fossils! We spent several hours walking around the exhibits and galleries celebrating the 3.9-billion-year-history of life on Earth. We stopped for a snack and were entertained by the numerous prairie dogs running around. After a quick stop at the playground were back on the road to Red Deer.

We checked into the Travel Lodge for a couple of nights while Sarah sorted out the details of her new apartment. The girls were happy to finally have made it to their new home and were super excited to check out all the playgrounds nearby.