Calgary, part 2

I managed to post about half of my trip to Calgary and then completely forget to do the rest. Humph.

We only had two days in Calgary, which was kind of sad. There were a lot of things I would have liked to have done or seen that we didn't get to do. Kind of a bummer, really, since it is a 13 hour drive away and I don't know when, if ever, I'll go back.

So after the ziplining adventure, we went back to the hotel and caught up with my old GM from Cincinnati, which was awesome. He's a really nice guy. I never really got to know him too well (GMs are busy people!) but it was nice to have that chance.

The next day was dinosaur day. Alberta is home to the Royal Tyrrell Museum, which I THINK is the largest collection of dinosaur fossils. Definitely the largest in Canada. Pretty sure the largest in North America. Maybe the world, but don't quote me on that. 10 seconds on their website isn't answering the question for me. Anyway, this place is awesome. It doesn't even matter if it is the biggest, because it rocks!

It is in Drumheller, which is about 2 hours from Calgary. Gorgeous drive! Hardly any of it is on the freeway, so we got to go on all these little roads and see farms and pretty scenery and things. The museum is in Alberta's Badlands, which was super exciting. I've always wanted to see the Badlands in the Dakotas and never have, so this was pretty awesome. Some of the weirdest landscape I have ever seen!

There's not a lot to say about the museum except dinosaurs, dinosaurs, dinosaurs! It wasn't expensive. I think it was $22 for the both of us. There were way too many people there. We found out later you're supposed to go in the afternoon, right before they close. I wish I would have known that, because it would have made the experience a lot more enjoyable. As it was, we were followed around by one little girl and her oblivious mother. Every time I pulled out my camera, this girl would pose. Wow.

Anyway, super cool. Drumheller is really cute. There are dinosaur statues and dinosaur themed places everywhere.

So the drunk lady at the pub the day before told us that we needed to go to Wayne, which was super close to Drumheller and has something like 13 bridges in 5 miles. We drove over all of them and passed through Wayne, which is an old mining town. There used to be 2,500 people who lived there, but now there's only around 30. That is so crazy to me! I can't imagine living in a town of 30 people with the closest big city being 2 hours away!

Sam found this really cool coal mine called the Atlas Coal Mine so we headed over there to check it out. The drive there was gorgeous too. We got out of the Badlands and were in what looked more like a prairie. Actually, it looked a lot like that gorgeous picture that is the main background on Windows recently with the green hill and blue sky. Beautiful!

The coal mine was really cool. We did two different tours. Unfortunately, we couldn't go into the actual mine, but we did get to look at the buildings and get a good sense of how it operated. I feel like I learned a lot about how a coal mine works. I don't think I would have ever learned that otherwise.

That, sadly, was pretty much the end of our time in Calgary. Once we got back from Drumheller, we were so tired that we ended up just getting some beers and meat and cheese in the hotel bar and going to bed.

On the way home, we drove through Banff National Park and stopped to see Moraine Lake. With the exception of one other lake in Scotland, this was probably the prettiest lake I've ever seen. The water was turquoise. Apparently the lake is glacier-fed, which is where it gets the color from, and it remain turquoise year- round. This chick at the hotel bar told us about it. She said she went while it was storming once and the lake was still that gorgeous color! Again, too many people. I remembered why I travel in the off-season!

The whole time we were there, Sam and I talked about seeing more of Canada. Most of it is so easy to see because even though the country has the second-biggest landmass in the world, almost all of the cities are really close to the border. We want to do a road trip to Yukon or the Northwest Territories. We can't decide which. I really want to go to Nunavut, but there aren't roads! Shame. We also want to drive across the whole thing. We think that would be a lot of fun. Maybe next year!