This was our next stop after Banff and to get here, it felt like we were driving to the middle of nowhere…
This was the first time in our Canada trip that we had a car. We picked up our rental car from Calgary airport and Max drove to Drumheller. Drumheller is a small town north-east of Calgary in Alberta. It was just under 1.5 hours from the airport and the drive there was so different to the landscape in Banff.
Drumheller was not in the radar for us when we decided to go to Canada. I’ve never even heard of this town and it’s not usually a top search when looking at where to go. However, I was served a video on Tiktok showing the Drumheller Badlands and I showed it to Max. Upon further searching, we learned that this small town also has a huge paleontology / dinosaur museum. With such weird and unique landscape, we decided to go. It was an easy stop from Calgary anyway and we were there for 2 nights.
You’ll see later in this post why Drumheller was a cool stop over and we’re glad we included it in our itinerary.
Max booked our rental car and we ended up with a Chrysler minivan. We had our parents with us and all our luggage from Vancouver and Banff as well. This car was nice and what we needed for a few days in Banff. This was the first time Max drove in Canada and at least it was an easy trip driving on the other side of the road as it wasn’t busy nor did we hit any traffic.
The landscape on the way to Drumheller was basically nothing. It was so flat and you couldn’t see anything, no mountains or hills, just either plain fields or random trees. The views were mostly flat fields as far as our eyes could see. It was bizarre after seeing snow-capped mountains for days in Banff. There were barely any cars too so it felt quite isolating.
The moment we reached Drumheller, it all made sense. The landscape from flat land to weird rocky formations appeared and we drove through the little town.
We checked into our Airbnb, our first and only one in this trip. The house was weird but we were only in Drumheller for 2 nights. We got a 2 bedroom house and the floor was uneven in this house. It did have a full kitchen though which was nice. We also finally had a washer and dryer so we were able to do cycles of laundry.
I started feeling sick with a cold in Banff, likely due to the cold and contrast of dry heat in our hotel room. I was fully sick when we got to Drumheller and needed a tissue at all times. It sucked but getting sick while travelling is normal. At least I was still okay enough to be out and about.
We popped back out and found a supermarket. We went to Freson Bros supermarket and it was so random seeing a Filipino food section here. Apparently, there is a big enough Filipino population in this small Drumheller town. We got some snacks, dinner for that night as we wanted to stay in and we got some ready to bake cookie dough which Max put in the oven. I mainly rested to try feel better.
Drumheller Badlands – Willow Creek Hoodoos
The next morning, we woke up and got ready to check out the hoodoos. This is the landscape I saw on the TT video and what made me curious.
The Willow Creek hoodoos are among Alberta’s most popular and widely-recognized geological formations. The hoodoos have these sandstone columns. Some look like mushrooms and it was pretty cool to see in person.
Seeing the hoodoos was free as well. It was a 15min drive from the main Drumheller town.
Some kids climbed up to the top but I wasn’t feeling that adventurous. Dad went up a bit though for photos. Some areas seemed slippery so I didn’t venture up high.
Max also disappeared for a bit to check out the other side.
This whole landscape was pretty cool. It felt like we were in a movie set. It didn’t feel real.
We also got lucky with the weather. It was sunny but it was quite chilly.
The hoodoos were probably the most different / unique landscape I’ve seen so far. It was fascinating and for less than 2 hours away from Banff, we were seeing something vastly different.
Here were some photos from Dad:
Horse Thief Canyon
Our next stop was Horse Thief Canyon. This was another free access spot.
This place had views towards Red Deer River valley. Again, it felt like we were in a film set but it was huge. The scale of this place was incredible. This is where it made sense that the drive here seemed like the land was just flat plain fields but there were actually big pockets of valleys and canyons, they were just under so we couldn’t see them.
The view here was more valleys as far as the eyes can see. This sort of landscape is something we haven’t really seen before or I’m not aware is something we have in NZ. You can walk down and explore the valleys further but we weren’t interested doing that as we didn’t have that much time.
As we were walking back to the car, we saw a cute little gopher!
It was so cute and friendly! Max managed to get some close up shots. It was adorable.
After Horse Thief Canyon, we wanted lunch. We went back to town and we went to Heller Good Sandwiches.
This place was cute and the food was good too. We also stopped by to have bubble tea.
One of the main spots in Drumheller is the World’s Largest Dinosaur that you can climb up. This tourist attraction is named Tyra and is 26m high.
The reason why this is an attraction is because Drumheller is near/within the Dinosaur Provincial Park which is a UNESCO World Heritage Site and is well known for having an abundance of dinosaur fossils. It is amazing how many fossils were found in this area.
Royal Tyrrell Museum
Our final main stop in Drumheller was the Royal Tyrrell Museum. This was also one of the reasons why we wanted to come here after learning at how awesome this museum is. I’m not hugely into dinosaurs and I didn’t know much about them but this museum BLEW my mind. I think I said ‘wow’ so many times inside this museum.
We spent a good few hours in this museum. My parents breezed through it compared to Max and I but we read each description and were in awe at what we saw here. I took some notes to remember specific ones so if you want to know more about dinosaurs, read below haha.
If you’re into dinosaurs, you will love this museum. It’s Canada’s only museum dedicated to ancient life and it has an amazing number of dinosaurs on display. Most of them were found right in Alberta.
The photo above is Calli, the best preserved and most complete triceratops skull from Canada. Apparently triceratops are rare in Canada and Calli was also found in a part of Alberta where dinosaur fossils were also uncommonly found. The rest of the triceratops skeleton were not found. This skull is from the late Cretaceous period around 68 million years ago. Incredible.
On the left photo above is a Gorgosaurus. It was an original fossil from 76 million years ago. The completeness of this fossil was a rare find. The completeness of this fossil and the river sands it was found in suggested that this dinosaur was quickly buried immediately after its death at the river bottom which prevented damage to the skeleton.
This fossil was massive. The skull displayed separately is an original and too heavy to be up with the rest of the bones. it was incredible how many almost complete parts of the skeleton they found and displayed here.
You can also see the preparation lab within the museum and they have videos explaining the process and how long it actually takes to preserve fossils. The one in the middle was mesmerising. It’s a Placenticeras and is 74 million years old found in Alberta. The photo on the right is a Ornithomimus just under 80million years ago and also found in the Dinosaur Provincial Park in Alberta.
The photo above is Borealopelta markmitchelli which the best preserved armoured dinosaur in the world. This is the only example of the species ever found. It was noted to have lived between 110-112 million years ago, it was a land animal and the body was found in marine rocks. This fossil was such an amazing find because of how well-preserved it was. The body has been kept in its three-dimensional shape and the armour is intact and complete. We could see the scaly skin. This was amazing. It boggles my mind how this fossil is over 100million years old!
I was in awe with many things in this museum but the ones above truly blew my mind. They found Canada’s first fossilised nests of dinosaur eggs! They were found in Alberta in 1987. This block had a single nest of Hypacrosaurus eggs. 7 of the eggs were complete and the pressure of burial flattened the eggs. This was insanely cool and before this museum, I wasn’t even into dinosaurs!!
This section was pretty cool as it opened up to a huge area with fossils displayed like they’re in their habitat. The top two photos on the left are Dimetrodon, a dinosaur I didn’t even know existed but they looked cool with their ‘sails’ pointing up which were noted to either used for display to attract mates or discourage predators.
There were so many cool fossils in this exhibit. There were baby Hadrosaurs, Lambeosaurus, Centosaurus, Euoplocephalus to name a few I managed to take a note of.
This was towards the end of the museum and it put the dinosaurs into scale as you can imagine how big they’d be if we still had them roaming around. Some would be terrifying as they’re so tall and massive with huge sharp teeth but some were small and would’ve been cute. I could imagine a baby dinosaur a size of a dog haha.
Just outside the museum, there’s a walkway leading up to a viewing platform. You see the landscape where some of these fossils were found and also the huge facility of Royal Tyrell Museum. This place was incredibly amazing. I’m so glad we went. Science has never been my favourite subject but this museum made me think science is so cool!
That basically sums up our time in Drumheller. We weren’t there for too long but also, there isn’t much to do there besides checking out the hoodoos/badlands and the dinosaur museum. We ended up having dinner at a Japanese restaurant for our last night and it was probably the longest/slowest service we ever had during our Canada trip.
The next morning, we drove back to Calgary airport to drop off our rental car and fly back to Vancouver. We did spot deer in a residential street as we were leaving. I also had a traumatic situation in the Airbnb lol – our Airbnb was not the flashest house. It’s what we needed for our short stay but it wasn’t the best. The floors were uneven and it only had one bathroom. On our last morning, the toilet got blocked and I was panicking as we had to leave in an hour or so. My dad tried to fix it but couldn’t. This was not ideal but Max being Max, he was able to fix it while I panicked. Haha. Crisis was eventually averted and we were glad to leave that Airbnb and Drumheller behind.
Drumheller was a random stop for us but I’m glad we went. It was so different to Vancouver and Banff. It felt like we were in the middle of nowhere but it was cool to see the hoodoos and learn more about dinosaurs especially knowing they found a lot of them in that area. Honestly, if you’re into dinosaurs, I would put Drumheller and Royal Tyrell Museum on my list to go to if you’re ever in Alberta / Calgary area.
After Drumheller, we went back to Vancouver so my next post is us exploring a different part of Vancouver CBD. 🙂
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