Rocks, fossils and Hoodoos

Drumheller had been on our list of “must visit” places since the beginning of our trip. Drumheller is in an area of Canada known as the Badlands (which stretches East from Drumheller in Alberta to the Saskatchewan border and south to the United States) and is home to amazing rock formations and the largest deposits of dinosaur bones in the world….a geologists paradise!

We spent our first day hiking in Horseshoe Canyon. This huge u-shaped canyon is an eye-poping sight when viewed from above. The two arms each stretch out 5km and revealed below you are the maroon striped canyon walls. Once down in the canyon there are many trails to follow taking you through the spectacular landscape which is composed of mudstone, sandstone, carbonaceous shale and coal seams, revealing the layers of time down to the Cretaceous period when dinosaurs roamed the lush sub-tropical habitat 70 million years ago. It was a landscape neither of us had ever experienced before and it was fascinating.

The next day we visited the Royal Tyrrell Museum and started the day with a tour of the horseshoe formation learning about the rocks, fossils, plants and animals of the Badlands…..it was truly fascinating and great fun hunting for fossils. After the tour we spent the rest of the day in the museum, there were so many fossils to see and so much to learn about the area. After the museum we visited Drumheller’s ‘Little church’ (known for “seating 10,000….6 at a time”) and the largest dinosaur, Tyra, in the world.

As we left Drumheller, to continue our journey East, we made a stop to visit the impressive Drumheller Hoodoos (a hoodoo is a tall, thin spire of rock formed by erosion), the hoodoos in Drumheller consist of relatively soft rock (claystone and sandstone) and are topped by harder, less easily eroded stone (limestone) that has protected each column from the elements. These hoodoos have a unique mushroom-like appearance as the underlying base erodes at a faster rate compared to the capstones….they are truly fascinating structures!