Dinosaur Provincial Park and Life in a Motorhome | Alberta Badlands Part 3 | Ep. 42

In the third and final installment of our series on the Alberta Badlands (yes, it’s that good that we need three episodes), we welcome Ben and Janine to talk to us about a family of 7 in a Motorhome, newbie travels, and of course, we’ll learn all about Dinosaur Provincial Park and what sets it apart from Drumheller.

Dinosaur Provincial Park is 48km from Brooks Alberta, about 2 hours Southeast of Drumheller, and is a UNESCO world heritage site. Unfortunately, we didn’t make it to the park on this trip, so we’ve brought our good friends and RV newbies, Ben and Janine to tell us all about their adventures at Dinosaur Provincial Park and give you the highlights you need to know.

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Transcript
Melina (5s):
Hey everyone. We wanted to start off this episode with a little disclaimer, as always, when we invite guests onto the show, it means that Dan and I have to sneak out of our carefully soundproof recording studio and come out into either the outside or in our kitchen or somewhere, a little bigger to accommodate our guests. This week, we have our good friends, Ben and Janine talking with us about dinosaur provincial park. It was recorded Thanksgiving weekend, 2021. And the weather was absolutely gorgeous. So we recorded it in our kitchen. All of the windows in our house were open. So you’re going to hear maybe from time to time, birds, construction sounds of traffic, but as always with interviews, we just take the good with the bad so we can bring you the best of the best.

Melina (50s):
And today is an episode you’re not going to want to miss. We talk dinosaur provincial park, which is a UNESCO world heritage site located in the Badlands of Alberta, approximately two, two and a half hours Southeast of Drumheller. So strap in because it’s going to be a great ride. Hello, everyone. Welcome to episode 42 of the RV connects podcast. As always, we’re bringing you stories from the weird and wonderful world of part-time road. Tripping. As we haul our family across north America, from our home in Southwestern, Ontario, Canada, as you know, we make it a habit of traveling far on our road trips. And by design, you just can’t see everything in one go, or you’ll never have time to get immersed in the places that you do choose to visit.

Melina (1m 33s):
So this very thing happened on the RV Canucks grand tour this summer, when we decided to spend time in the drum Heller, part of the Alberta Badlands and due to factors beyond our control, which would be the trailer problems we talk about in episode 40 and a lot of side trips I needed to make for work well, we just couldn’t make dinosaur provincial park. So the questions today are, what’s the difference between visiting the two areas is one better than the other. And why are we even talking about a place we didn’t even get to visit on this trip?

Dan (2m 4s):
Well, the answers lie in the two good-looking faces across from us right now, our friends, Ben and Janine, who took a very similar trip this summer in their motor home named Marge. And they are here to tell us what we missed. So welcome to the show. Hey guys, Hey guys, thanks for having us. We’re big fans and super excited to be here. We’ve known Ben and Janine for at least 10 years. Ben’s coached hockey for six or seven, and we’ve played with their girls for even longer than that. So it’s really fun to have them here. Yeah. Again, big fans of the show and to be here talking about a trip that we took very similar is going to be exciting. So let’s do it. So let’s paint a picture for our listeners. What can you tell us about Marge and how did your family size play into your decision to get a motor home?

Dan (2m 47s):
We do, we have five children, so fitting everybody in the truck and towing a trailer package. It was not an option. We don’t have enough seat belts. So we had to look at a bigger option to, to complete our road trips and to view the world. And that’s how we ended up on our motor home. So she actually has eight seat belts. We can tow eight and sleep eight comfortably along with the other bonuses of kind of having your vehicle attached to your rig is, you know, the ease of being a rookie in the RV sense and in packaging trailers and loading everything out and getting set up at your campsite, it’s a super simple and straightforward. It’s just a push of a button just to push them a button. That’s right.

Melina (3m 25s):
Like that. So tell us about like, what’s the sleeping arrangements. Like what’s the setup in like?

Dan (3m 29s):
Sure. So in the back we have our own private bedroom, it’s got a queen size bed in it and all the storage, et cetera, that’s sort of separated by your shower, in your bathroom. And then above the driver cabin is a queen-sized bunk as well. The couch folds out and then the table folds out into a doubles. So nice. Whatever that was. Yeah. 2, 4, 6, 8 is, is real easy. Yeah.

Melina (3m 52s):
Okay. So when you guys travel, tell us a bit about how you travel. Do you tow something behind you? Do you, what happens when you need to get groceries or you need to dump when your tanks fall? How do you handle that?

Dan (4m 2s):
That is obviously a concern, not having a, a vehicle in which you can kind of take off and go, fortunately, it is actually pretty easy to pack up if we had to go. So we were in lake Louise and we had to go over to the gondola to do that adventure. It was not walking distance. So, I mean, you’re rolling your awning. You take out your leveling pads and there you go. I want to notice Janine concur with that assessment as I, this is the first time that we’ve got to look at two people as

Janine (4m 28s):
Yeah, I do. It was great. We, I was a little bit concerned about packing everything up, but we left the chairs and everything behind. It was like, we’re coming back in four hours. It’ll be fine. It was fairly straightforward.

Dan (4m 37s):
I think it was you actually, that convinced me. I was,

Janine (4m 40s):
And I was like, we’re going to this gondola and I’m not walking that far.

Dan (4m 45s):
So I, yeah, I’m more the, you know, once I get on my leveling moons and everything set, like we’re set, don’t touch, but it’s really those pull through sites for super easy to

Janine (4m 56s):
The trip on the last day, on our way out. I said, no, we can’t. No.

Dan (5m 0s):
So we don’t necessarily tow anything. We do have a trailer split, so I have a bike rack and then one of those trays, so I can store the barbecue tank and the barbecue on the tray and then still put four bikes on the back. And that’s mostly how we get around. So the biggest actually regret going out west is I was thinking I wanted to pack light and I would leave the bikes at home and I would leave my tray at home. And then when we got to our site, we realized that the bathroom was farther away than we wanted it to be. And that a bike would be super handy in the morning after that first coffee. Oh,

Melina (5m 31s):
Okay. Yep. Gotcha. So do you have a, no number two rule in March,

Dan (5m 36s):
If you’re over the age of 10, there’s a no number two row.

Janine (5m 41s):
So you’re more than capable of walking. Yeah,

Dan (5m 43s):
That’s right. TMI. I have gone number two on emergency, but it was, it was not a comfortable position. So

Melina (5m 53s):
It took us a lot of years, I think, to just regularly use the full facilities our trailer. But now we do, it’s still not comfortable, but whatever, if you need to, you need to, I guess we

Dan (6m 2s):
Blame it on COVID. Yeah.

Melina (6m 4s):
So maybe take us through your trip because you had a fairly similar trip to ours. Tell us about the highlights that you hit and mostly, how did the whole family feel? Cause this was like your first big

Janine (6m 14s):
RV road trip for the first time. Longer than five days. Yeah, let’s do 15. It was like, let’s go through,

Dan (6m 20s):
We’ll need to know the, they only picked up the RV midway through last season. That’s

Janine (6m 24s):
Right. It’s we’re only a year in.

Dan (6m 26s):
We were able to do maybe six trips last year, but I don’t think anything was over three hours away. So, you know, like you said, it was our first long haul. So for me it was all preparation ahead of time, you know, oil changes and tire prep and just kind of making sure that was good to go. Yeah.

Janine (6m 42s):
And I was trying to figure out how to fit two weeks worth of food in a motorhome

Dan (6m 46s):
And, and, and close, like, what are we going to do for, are we going to do laundry while we’re out there? Are we going to just back everything into the back? Right. So, I mean, for us, that was the, the prep was a big ordeal. And thankfully I think that paid off in a, in a long way because, you know, we were able to take off actually the night before we intended to leave, we were going to leave on a Saturday morning, but we ended up leaving late on Friday afternoon and got to Sudbury, you know, basically departing from Sudbury, all the difference in the tree. Of course, departing from there

Janine (7m 17s):
We can breathe. Yeah.

Dan (7m 18s):
It’s a little bit of pressure because we were looking at nine hour days as planned and, and like you said, we’d never being on a trip that long. We didn’t know how that was going to fly. We have taken a trip out east, or we had driven to Nova Scotia of course, in the car. And

Janine (7m 32s):
That’s never traveled in a car again.

Dan (7m 34s):
Yeah. And that’s like a quarter of this essence. I mean, you’re not even out of Ontario, by the time he gets on a Nova Scotia and that was, yeah. Janine was threatening to fly home from that trip.

Melina (7m 45s):
So you don’t have the same philosophy about sitting in vehicles for a long

Janine (7m 50s):
No, no, I don’t do. I’m not a passenger. Yeah. Not it’s like, you either need to ignore me or pull over because I, I can’t sit here calmly. It’s impossible. So

Melina (7m 60s):
Did you drive marginal? Did you drive model? No,

Janine (8m 3s):
I haven’t. I’m not opposed to it, it just didn’t come up, but it was like, whatever. We’re good. Yeah. I was in the back with the kids for the most part, trying to keep them entertained and somewhat,

Dan (8m 12s):
I don’t know if I would describe myself as a control freak per se. It wasn’t not until Saskatchewan on the way home, where I was willing to admit defeat and need for a little break. So we’d pull over to a rest stop and we were walking around and doing our thing. And I said, you know, maybe you can drive for a little bit. It’s where it’s flat. It’s straight. You just put her on cruise at 1 0 7 and you float. And she, her response was like cruise control. I’m not currently using cruise control.

Janine (8m 40s):
I don’t, I don’t drive my car with cruise control. I hate it. I feel like, again, it’s like, I’m not in control of this vehicle. I don’t like it. So it’s, I can drive on 10 and not have the cruise on. We’re good. He didn’t like that answer.

Dan (8m 52s):
Yeah. That, that maybe was the control freak portion of the fine. We’ll just extend this break another 15 minutes and I’ll push on through. No, but the trip out there, it was amazing on many fronts. So the kids were sort of interested in seeing wildlife. I was interested in, in seeing wildlife and the geographic changes and the whole bit, and that’s what I occupied my time with. But really the country was on fire when we drove out. So crossing, you know, from Sudbury to thunder bay was a big push, beautiful country. We saw black bear, great weed. Weren’t really seeing smoke yet, but then sort of the next day coming out of thunder bay and then all the way he stayed in Brandon Manitoba the next night. And it was a blot, the sun out kind of adventure, the whole way, super dark, super anticipating, seeing flames over the next corner.

Dan (9m 39s):
Sort of thing. Really weird is the best way to describe it, drive through there. But, you know, March did pretty good. It was really hilly. There was some Hills that, especially around that thunder bay area where, you know, we were doing 65 kilometers in the slow lane, by the time she could get to the top that’s right. But in fairness, we’re talking about like 13 degree planes, right. And then admittedly, I probably had too much water in the reservoir tank. And admittedly, when you fill up the tank, I notice anyways, like a full tank of gas, even down to three quarters of a tank, there’s a difference on how, how she pulls kind of thing. She wants to be three quarters full to just under half full and not as much water in the reservoir tank to pee as I thought we would need, but oh, to Brandon.

Dan (10m 26s):
And then we pushed onto medicine hat in the state of medicine hat the night before, just so we could kinda have a day, get whatever

Janine (10m 33s):
Feed at a hotel night. So we could shower

Dan (10m 36s):
And well like groceries or whatever. We were going to get the next morning prior to going into the park. So the trip out there was actually, you know, not nearly as frantic as going out east. And it was probably because Janine wasn’t necessarily looking out the window at what we were driving at. She was in the back doing her thing, entertainment wise. And I think that’s pretty much it. Right. The kids spend a lot of time sitting around doing their thing anyways at home. We’re just kind of in a home on wheels. So for them, it’s just whatever, we’re still just playing tick-tock or whatever we’re doing

Melina (11m 6s):
The new environment of the window. What did you guys think? Was this the first time you guys had driven through the primaries? Did you find it boring or did you find it fascinating? Like the landscape,

Janine (11m 16s):
The first hour was fascinating. It was boring. It was like, we’re just going forever on the same thing. It’s got overlooking out the window.

Dan (11m 24s):
It felt like, you know, you would, oh yeah, we must’ve been driving for 45 minutes. We must be 30 kilometers down the road. And he looked down and you’re like, that was 1.6 kilometer mile. And it was, yeah, well, no, you, you like the trains and

Janine (11m 39s):
Right occupied with the train. So the longest trains I’ve ever seen in my life, as far as you can see in front of you too, as far as you can see behind you is one train, Indiana thought that was the greatest thing that’s ever happened.

Dan (11m 49s):
Yeah. Yeah. Double excites me. Yeah. Double Decker train. But again, the country on fire, the Prairie’s where like a, a Misty haze in the distance. So like she was saying, one side was trained from as far as you could see both ways. The other side was the end of the world, but the end of the world was only 300 feet away because it seemed like there was a smoke being there

Melina (12m 7s):
Crazy. Like, I think you guys got home like a week before we left and we had nothing the whole way, like all of the smoke had cleared out. It’s amazing how quickly these things can shift.

Dan (12m 16s):
We’re super lucky because it was like the day before we got to the park was still basically a haze where he couldn’t see anything. And the guy was saying,

Janine (12m 24s):
Yeah, lake Louise, he said, you couldn’t see the mountain range from the lookout 0.2 days or three days before we got there. It was like, oh, wow. So,

Dan (12m 33s):
So like with the firing kids and everything that comes with travel, are you the kind of people that are like, we have to get to Sudbury than we have to be by thunder bay by this day, then Brandon or you just kinda roll with the flow.

Melina (12m 45s):
I feel like Ben does not roll with that.

Janine (12m 47s):
Hello? No, Ben had booked the hotel for the hotel nights. It’s like, this is gonna, we’re going to stay here and we’re gonna, we have to be there by that time now. And I was like, on the way back was way less stressful. It was like, no, we have driven far enough today. We’re just going to park somewhere.

Dan (13m 0s):
Yeah. Yeah. I, I had a destination. I need an end game. Where are we getting to? My philosophy was more or less every two hours. I would start looking for the first rest stop. And then if that was two and a half hours, if that was three hours or it was two hour and four minutes, whatever, we would stop at the restaurant, even if we needed to or not. And just take 15 minutes, just have a snack, just walk around, get back on it sort of thing. And then that sort of coincided with where our gas stops needed to be. Just on that timing. You know, we were getting a half a tank for four hours. Basically. It makes me feel better. Cause it felt like every two hours I dumped $5,000 into my gas tank. It was a lot of money on gas. It was not a cheap adventure.

Dan (13m 41s):
When we got to Sudbury thinking, it was such a great idea leaving early. And then I went Northern Ontario. Awesome. A dollar 50, not at 51 9, 1 51 9. Oh good. And I need to fill up. I probably should have

Janine (13m 53s):
Thought of that before we got here. Yeah.

Dan (13m 55s):
For our American listeners, a dollar 59 is a dollar 59 a liter. So just times out by four and you’ll get your price for now.

Melina (14m 2s):
Yeah. Yeah. It’s insane. It’s not a cheap way to travel. Like I think it’s a, it’s a different way to travel, but

Janine (14m 8s):
It’s different for us. It is. Sometimes it does cost us less in that there are six of us or seven of us traveling. So seven plane tickets cost a lot of money for sure. And then when you get there, you need a big vehicle to rent and you need, right. So it does end up saving us some maybe, but not, it’s not cheap,

Melina (14m 26s):
But it brings you closer together. As a family

Janine (14m 30s):
Are very much at a point where we’re buying time with our children now.

Melina (14m 33s):
Totally. We feel the same way. It’s insane. We’re we’re on borrowed time. I think for a lot of these road trips. So the more we can do it now, the better

Dan (14m 41s):
It’s a it’s memories. Right? That’s what, you know, you mentioned our relationship going back through hockey. That’s my biggest wealth in life is that memory pool that we have to draw of all those times where stats are over here was screaming and yelling at somebody. And I had to step in front of them.

Melina (14m 58s):
Dan has a reputation I beg to

Dan (14m 59s):
Differ. Ben brings out the worst in me, make sure I, I may instigate and then turn around, but we digress here.

Melina (15m 8s):
So I want to talk about dinosaur provincial park. Did you guys stay in the park?

Dan (15m 12s):
We stayed in the park itself, proper three nights at which we booked. It was a six month in advance, I believe was the date on that one. So we weren’t even, we had the trip plan, but didn’t even know if we could stay there and had some campgrounds as backups. But really that was our number one. And thankfully we were able to get on their site.

Janine (15m 36s):
We went out west. Yeah. That’s the only reason we went west

Melina (15m 40s):
Was dinosaur provincial park. So did this planning start before or after you got the gigantic Brontosaurus for your birthday before?

Janine (15m 46s):
Okay. Before the day we bought Marge, actually I said, we’re going to dinosaur park.

Dan (15m 53s):
We told that to the guy we bought it from. He was like, no,

Janine (15m 55s):
You’re not. And we’re like, no, it’s going to happen. So we’ve sent him a picture since yeah. Of March at dinosaur park. That’s amazing.

Dan (16m 2s):
He was really excited to get that email. It was

Janine (16m 4s):
Funny. I’ve got a minor dinosaur

Dan (16m 6s):
Thing. Dyno file, I think is what it’s called. Yeah.

Janine (16m 8s):
Everybody says you’re going to dinosaur park for the kids. It’s like, no, no, I’m going to find dinosaur bones. Yeah. And the kids don’t actually have to be there for it.

Melina (16m 19s):
Okay. So set us up because we obviously only went to Drumheller from what I understand about dinosaur provincial park, it’s a lot more open in terms of like going out and wandering and like just discovering, like tell us, take us through that. I mean, first of all, the provincial park, the campground looks really awesome.

Ben (16m 35s):
So Janine and I had been to have been to the grand canyon. I don’t know if you’ve been to the grand canyon, but that all, when you walk out sort of like, wow, there’s probably something special that’s been going on here for a few years. Yeah. It’s very similar. So as you come to the entrance of the park, it’s up actually up on the hill and part of the trip out for me actually the most, most interesting was the geographic changes. You, you can’t help it witness as you’re driving through Saskatchewan. It’s quite obvious. You’re driving through the bottom of what used to be an ocean. And you’re driving out of the ocean to the shallow water of Alberta. And then you can almost see the waves as they would come in. And that’s what you’re driving through into Alberta.

Dan (17m 15s):
And the Badlands is very similar where you get up to the top of this hill and it’s like, oh, there was a, a bunch of water. You can see that as just rushed through here and created all this grand canyon esque type geographic structures. And you can see the different layers to the point where we paused. We were really excited to get there, but we paused at the top of that hill and pulled over and the girls all had to get out.

Janine (17m 41s):
Right. It was pretty good. I only almost cried three times. It was, it was close. Like it was not because I was just so excited to actually be there yet.

Dan (17m 50s):
And so you drive sort of down into the park after we get our pictures and we check out, oh, okay, there’s some trails up here. Maybe we’ll come back here. Later, you drive down into the park. And what is the bad lands is at the time was like 4,005 degrees, Fahrenheit, really hot. It was a heat wave. It was a heat wave, but there was, there’s nothing there’s just rock and stone and bone except where the river goes through is like this lush sort of following. And that’s where all the campsites are in this little lush area. So again, as you’re coming down, you’re kind of looking into this cool Greenidge and you see now the campsites all in this area,

Janine (18m 29s):
Shaded nice and then backed right onto the bad man. It’s like, it was right there.

Dan (18m 33s):
So the park is more or less like maybe four or five major trails pre carved out through the Badlands. So they don’t want you necessarily free roaming through. There’s plenty of signage actually that, you know, stay on the trails. And there’s a couple areas where they’re actually doing live excavations, where of course they have a quarantined off. Most of it, most of it. And that’s really the draw to the park is, is the hiking is the exploration. There’s not really a swimming hole per se. We were lucky that the river was really, really low. And the girls went in the river and played around. But I was talking to one of the locals and by really, really low, he was saying it was 10 to 12 feet lower than normal.

Dan (19m 15s):
Right. And he’s like, no, normally you can’t go in the water here because you’ll be, it’s just too fast. That’s right. It’s and even, I mean, it got to three feet deep. So Indiana went in the water, but even then it was a strong current through there. And I understand that they have signage saying, we recommend you not go to the water. Oh, that’s why, but yeah. So that the site itself, we were, you know, you get there and then you get checked in. For me, it wasn’t necessarily like roughing it. They have a cafe, you know, the crustaceans cafe they have, which is air conditioned. Thanks. And then the laundry room attached to it. Oh, sweet laundry room. Pay per use showers, things like that. Which even during COVID thankfully were, were open.

Dan (19m 57s):
Yeah. Even the restaurant, everything was open and then they have a secondary building, which they label as a museum, but it’s, it’s a visitor center. It’s a visitor center. That’s right. It does have like two displays and maybe some wildlife and geographic information and then a theater room. Yeah. With Dan, Dan, the nature man type stuff going on in the background. Yeah.

Janine (20m 18s):
The site’s just electrical only. Did you have any services? You were electric and there was water available, but you had to not on this.

Dan (20m 26s):
Okay. Yeah, that was, I think we were talking about that. Maybe it’s us being a green to the whole road trip and game and the provincial parks. And last year, most of our trips were to private parks through the we’re members of the RV Explorer clubs. So it’s, it’s, you know, whatever is on their list. So maybe that’s just common for provincial parks. We had power, but no water. And of course the, the water communal water was a cross from us, but that campsite had more or less parked their vehicle and assembled their picnic table and their belongings in such a way that they were clearly laying claim. So when we got there, we get our site, we get all, actually we were there early.

Dan (21m 9s):
So we were able to park in the middle and we had lunch at the cafe. I was talking about, we went and checked out through the museum and we had a bus tour scheduled for the next day. So when we got finally able to get into our site, we had to get water first because the, okay, we don’t have water hookup. And it was kind of weird having to back up at least 20 feet and then carry my hose through their picnic table to fill up the water from the communal water. But it was all good. It was,

Melina (21m 37s):
There was no like one filling station. When you got to the park for everybody, you just had to use the taps that were like random taps throughout the park.

Dan (21m 45s):
Yeah. So there, there was the dumping station obviously, but the dumping station in my recollection had two lanes or two dumping holes and a water available for that for, for washing. But I don’t remember. I don’t remember it being portable.

Melina (21m 59s):
So that’s very like America and a lot of state parks will do that where you just have to like find a tab.

Dan (22m 5s):
Yeah. So the park is apparently open year round with which I can only imagine in the winter time it would just be a big white puffy thing. You would get lost real easy, but that’s what I sort of concluded the water. Me maybe being specifically placed around, had to do with, so in winter it was an easy sort of shut off and go, yeah. I, to their credit there very well may have been a potable water filling station that completely went over our heads. It’s possible. Yeah. It’s

Melina (22m 35s):
Anything’s possible. Hey, they’re just popping in with a little clarification about the water at dinosaur provincial park, as Ben mentioned, the park is indeed open year round, which is absolutely fantastic. And it looks like water is available from early may until early October, which the actual dates will fluctuate from year to year, given the freeze boss cycle or whenever the first snowfall or the first freezes, it looks like there is two sources of fresh water at the dump station. However, by the reviews of people using the park, it looks like most people do tend to get their fresh water from the various tabs located in the camping.

Dan (23m 13s):
But the sites were all flat, all super easy to back into. They not very private, not very private, no we’re right next

Melina (23m 21s):
To the guy next to you,

Dan (23m 22s):
But it was fine, but it was, yeah. I mean, so I think there is a very big fluctuation in the water levels through it makes sense, right? Whenever there’s spring runoff or whenever there’s a major rains, the, the do their thing. And so we had to be kind of far away from the, so our campsite was deep. We were far away from the river, but there was no real defining lines between the sites more or less. You just kind of pulled close to your post and good enough that our neighbors were good though. Friendly.

Janine (23m 57s):
Yeah. For the amount of time you spent on your site, really? It didn’t matter. So what was the bus tour?

Dan (24m 2s):
So the bus was a guided tour through the

Janine (24m 5s):
Nesco site.

Dan (24m 6s):
Cool. Yeah, it was really cool. Actually. It

Janine (24m 9s):
Was amazing. Yeah. There was a little portion of it where they actually had like the mini dinosaur bones out. So she said, there’s not a space in the site that you can walk without stepping on dinosaur bones. They’re there, they’re everywhere. So the kids all found their bones, little like pieces of tenant, old turtle shells, old, you know, pinky toes and like all the things. It was phenomenal. Yeah.

Dan (24m 30s):
It was cool. They had, so the two people working the bus tour, one kind of focused on the cultural side, you know, the black people and their use of the bad lands and how they would set up their camps around the perimeters. And it was like a, it was known to be a coming of age place where they would send the boys down, you know, walked for three days in that direction, into this bad land, become a man and how the site was alive,

Janine (24m 54s):
The earth as being alive in the faces, in the rock. And you can see all these, like w they start bringing the things up. And if you notice here and if you look here, it was great that way. And then, yeah, the other woman was very much, this is this kind of dinosaur, and this is this kind of dinosaur. I was like, you’re my favorite human.

Dan (25m 11s):
It was really neat though, because you know, culturally and historically to go back to the first nations people that would have probably seen the big bones and then related those to Buffalo. So their sort of take on it and how they regarded it as the mystical place. And then we, like Janine said, you’re, you’re basically stepping on crushed dinosaur bones in every square inch of the place, which is we found, you know, bones that looked like a hipbone Reiland found turtle shells. We, you know, it was everything we were hoping for when you go. And especially the bus tour, they take you to the specific good spots, know

Janine (25m 50s):
Where it is. Right.

Dan (25m 51s):
I mean, that’s right. So, and I guess they’ve been shipping what they’re finding here to the museum in Drumheller. They do have portions in the park where they’ve actually just left the excavation and built a building around where they found the bones in the rock dinosaurs

Janine (26m 7s):
As they were, where they were found.

Dan (26m 10s):
Yeah. It was really cool. So awesome. So for us, because it was so hot, that was, you know, we were all set up, there was a playground for the kids to play out, which they’re stoked about. Good, but more or less, it’s just, let’s go exploring. Right. So it was morning time, like, okay, we’re going to get up and do our hike. And by, it will be done by 11 and then you guys can do whatever the heck you want to do for the rest of the day. And that worked out real cool.

Janine (26m 34s):
Find a sprinkler. It got re it was really hot. Yeah.

Dan (26m 38s):
Yeah. But so is the bus tour like a half a day or a couple hours, or

Janine (26m 42s):
The one we did was like half day,

Dan (26m 44s):
There was a few different tours you could do, but you know, just like Disney, you got to book them six years in advance.

Janine (26m 50s):
Well, there’s that, but the other other thing was a lot of them were designed for older children. You’ve got to be 14, you’ve got to be 16 years. Adults only. It’s like to do the actual excavation sites or tours are $200 a person and you’ve got to be 14. And it’s like, okay, well we have a

Dan (27m 7s):
Five-year-old and it’s eight hours in the sun because you’re, you’re literally doing an excavation with them. Your cheap labor paid. No, you’re paying them to be the labor for them, I guess. Yeah. Right, right. So we did the

Janine (27m 18s):
Bus tour friendly

Dan (27m 19s):
One and it was the family friendly one. That’s right. Yep. So we were able to hike around and kind of do our own thing from the bus tour. And it was, yeah, it was a half day, maybe two o’clock and it got back at five, something like that. So

Melina (27m 33s):
Could someone with limited mobility do that bus tour or what’d you, do you have to be able to,

Janine (27m 39s):
I don’t think it’s not wheelchair accessible for

Dan (27m 42s):
Yeah. I’m just trying to think of the boss maybe was, but I don’t. Yeah. I don’t remember. It would be very difficult because there is, yeah. They bring you basically to the foot of here and then we’re going to walk around this Hutto or we’re going to walk around whatever, and check out back here and without, yeah. It’d be difficult. So the bus tour was really the only preplanned event we had though for the park or done in advance, mostly because yeah, like I said, it was either, do we want to be out there for eight hours? It’s probably fun for the first 45 minutes, but I would have loved

Janine (28m 15s):
It. Yeah. I would have had to listen to the kids complain.

Dan (28m 18s):
I contemplated sending Janine for eight hours.

Melina (28m 21s):
You didn’t, you didn’t pay the 200 bucks for her to go

Dan (28m 23s):
Dig for the day it was on the table, but yeah, it was okay.

Melina (28m 28s):
So do you think three days was enough or would you like to have spent more time?

Janine (28m 32s):
No, I think three days was good because I mean, we went from there to the Royal trout museum to finish the day out. It was kind of like the icing on the cake. You get all the history, you get all the fun of it. And then you see what’s actually been found. Yeah. Incomplete pieces.

Dan (28m 47s):
Yeah. We went pretty hard in the paint to dinosaur wise, as far as like the first night we watched Jurassic park and then the second night dressing part two. Right. And it was, it was all about the ch on our tracks. The purpose of going on the track is to see natured.

Janine (29m 1s):
No, the kids found dinosaur bones on trails that they weren’t supposed to be on. And we have picked like, it, it just got them out. That was the biggest thing for me is like, there’s, they’re excited about it. They want to see it. And it, they, I don’t have a problem getting the ten-year-old to walk for seven kilometers because something cool is going to happen.

Dan (29m 19s):
But by the end of the third, like three nights, you know, the fourth day, obviously isn’t much of a day by the time you pack up and dump and get ready to move on. And again, as she said, we were going to Drumheller. So we were out early that morning trying to get to the museum for about 11. So we didn’t feel rushed going there. Cause we were actually spending that night in Calgary. So it was another, we don’t want to rush through the museum, but don’t necessarily want to be there for 12 hours either. Right. But the park, I mean, where the river goes through, I mentioned that lush area, there is one trail, that’s more like an evening trail where you, you’re going to see more Cottonwood trees through the Cottonwood trees where there’s a history of the forest fires.

Dan (29m 59s):
And you can see where they’re burnt in the trees. And these trees are like 150 years old and oh, that’s cool. Yeah. It was, it was, we saw, you know, snakes and deers and whatever else on our tracks. And there’s

Janine (30m 11s):
Like four main hiking trails. And once you’ve done them, you’ve

Dan (30m 13s):
Kind of done them. Okay. That’s right. So at the end of the third night or the, by the end of that third day, I guess is like, okay, well, you know, I’ve definitely got my steps in and I found some bones and

Janine (30m 24s):
Yeah, we were good. Three days was good. Could’ve done four. Yeah. Probably to spend a week there. We probably would have been looking for things to do. Right.

Dan (30m 31s):
Honestly, it was like, it was really tiny degrees Celsius or something sit like the hottest place on the planet. Pretty sure people in Libya were like, woo.

Melina (30m 41s):
It sounds to me then like, you know, three days in dinosaur provincial park. And if you really wanted to make a full-on dyno vacation, you could do two to three days in drama, Heller, and area. And you would have like the perfect weeks vacation. Yes.

Dan (30m 54s):
Absolutely. Driving into Drumheller is like, you know, the Disney of dinosaurs and you can actually see the failings of the glory days. Right. There used to be a hotel here that has a giant dinosaur in the front. And you could tell he was busy as all hell in the eighties. But yeah. Things have dwindled since Expedia has come around. For sure. Right. But once you get to the museum, it’s like, you know, she was, wide-eyed like a kid at Disney.

Melina (31m 22s):
I actually want to talk to you about that because you know how like B how did you do the trails behind the museum? No. Okay. Well, they have signs basically saying what to do. If you find fossils or bones or something, you take a photo

Janine (31m 34s):
At dinosaur park

Melina (31m 35s):
As well. I was going to ask like, what’s the protocol. If you find a bone you’re not allowed to

Janine (31m 39s):
Take them with you. Yeah,

Dan (31m 40s):
No. So we did actually do this Rhilyn we were exploring on the backside of a Hutto on our last day. Well, Hutto to explain is a geographic formation where there’s like a limestone and then a different formation of stone, but then a real heavy stone on top. That’s got an iron base and it kind of looks like a mushroom head. Maybe it’s the best way to use to explain it. And slowly it erodes away and that falls. And so anyways, we were on the backside of this and she found a bone sticking out of the backside of this rock that, you know, maybe not many people actually explore back to. So we took a picture and the protocol is they have a, an email address. I, I can’t think of off the top of my head, but you take a picture.

Dan (32m 20s):
You hopefully can stamp your geographic location with a longitude, latitude, the coordination, and you email it to them. And they’ll, they’ll send you an email back saying, thank you for submitting. We’re going to investigate your, your claim and get back to you sort of thing. So, so

Melina (32m 35s):
You emailed that in.

Dan (32m 36s):
Yeah. So we did that. Yeah. I haven’t heard anything more than the, thank you for you.

Janine (32m 42s):
It may have been petrified wood. Right? How she was convinced it as a thought, like a bone we’ll let her have

Melina (32m 48s):
It. Yeah. Oh, for sure. That’s

Dan (32m 50s):
<inaudible> let’s talk the story up here. We’re going to give them to her on the way out. We also would give them any citing. They’d seen our daughter Nerissa lovingly saw three mousses cuddling together on the side of the road. There was three

Janine (33m 6s):
Moves. It’s like,

Dan (33m 6s):
Yeah. Well, okay. So we get that shirt. Yeah. Okay. Sorry. Nerissa if you’re listening to this,

Melina (33m 15s):
For those who follow us on Instagram, there is a photo. If you go back to August, there’s a photo of that sign that the museum puts out on. Like what the email address is, what the protocol is. And it reminds me a lot of you guys need to do Moab. You, you guys need to take March Tamala. Cause that is like the wild west of like dinosaur. Like you just go out into the back country and there’s dinosaur tracks sites where tracks have been preserved in spaces that used to be old lakes and their protocol, which we learned at the MOLAB museum is like, if you’re like canoeing down the river and you see something in a rock, you do the same thing, you report it to the museum. And if it is a significant fine, they will name it after you is because there’s so much stuff out there that they just rely on the public to help them find it as well.

Melina (33m 56s):
It’s so cool.

Dan (33m 57s):
Yeah. I think they’ve, they’ve had an ongoing excavation at dinosaur park. They were saying since the seventies, like there’s always been at least one, usually three to four continuously, almost fully preserved findings that they’re still coming out with, you know, 40, 50 years later. Yeah.

Melina (34m 17s):
That’s amazing. How long has this been on your bucket list? Janine?

Janine (34m 22s):
I don’t know. Since forever. I don’t know. I can’t remember the first time I heard that there was a, such a place is dinosaur perk, but I was going there from the first time I knew there was a place.

Dan (34m 33s):
Yeah, yeah. Through the museum. I mean, you were, you were wide-eyed and happy to be in. And it was busy, especially for what we thought was COVID restrictions,

Janine (34m 44s):
No restrictions, zero restrictions, Restrictions.

Dan (34m 48s):
Just speak of that. Actually I say this often on our trip out somewhere around Brandon Manitoba, there was an imaginary line where COVID just stopped existing altogether. And we were, you know, we’re, we’re fully taken care of and we’re vaccinated and the kids are vaccinated and, and we didn’t really maybe take concern per se. Oh, nobody had masks on. Everybody had whatever, but we were happy to be in Drumheller, happy to be in a busy spot and happy to partake. But I

Janine (35m 19s):
It’s just was the busiest place. I think I’ve been to in two

Dan (35m 21s):
Years. I don’t know when you actually started that. We definitely part of buying March was specifically as the inspiration of this, finding these spots and going, can we want to visit these spots, but it’s, you know, fortunate to fly everybody to Calgary and then figure out how to do that. So, well, how do we do this? And that’s, that’s sort of what led down the, okay, let’s, let’s get an RV, let’s find a, a trailer. Let’s find something we can use to connect with nature and to also explore the world and to also force memories into our children that they may or may not appreciate, but they’re gonna kind of get them

Janine (36m 1s):
Someday. They’ll appreciate them right now. Sometimes

Dan (36m 4s):
It’s forced. Yeah. You know, if we had to choose one of the other to stay in drama Heller, I’m sure there’s popular campgrounds in the area that would have provided just as much entertainment. Maybe not the exploration of finding the dinosaur bones and maybe not the, you know, the full-on hands experiences the dinosaur provincial park had. So I don’t know.

Janine (36m 25s):
We literally did no research on drum Heller itself, besides that that’s where the museum, that’s

Dan (36m 30s):
Where we’re going.

Melina (36m 32s):
I would say it’s great. Like there’s a lot more wandering wherever you want, which is why, you know, I get why at dinosaur provincial park, they have the signs saying like, stay on the trails. Whereas Drumheller Heller’s like, it’s like you have a free for all go out and do and see what,

Dan (36m 45s):
And that’s what we noticed driving it to the museum actually is the surrounding geography, you know, would lend to the same sort of exploration. I don’t know what the frequency of finding the bones would be if that’s similar, but, but it’s gotta be similar. Yeah. We were just happy to go to the spot. You know what I mean? It’s kinda like going to Disneyland and staying at Disneyland, not staying at the, the whole Joe next door.

Melina (37m 9s):
Speaking of California, you also need to go to the library at carpets. Have you been there? I have not. Okay.

Janine (37m 15s):
No, that is in the plants. California is probably going to be margin trip of 20.

Melina (37m 21s):
Okay. So that’s our next question is what’s next for Marge? Is it going to be,

Dan (37m 26s):
Yeah, so Marge, we went 7,556 kilometers round trip. Yeah. And we didn’t have, you know, knock on wood. The biggest issue we had was this knucklehead forgetting to put the coolant reservoir cap back on one morning and then getting, you know, all the way to brand them before you realize that, oh, I just drove nine hours without the reservoir cap on there, but there’s still something in the reservoir, thankfully. And we’re across the street from a Canadian tire. So I had a minor meltdown crisis in that Brandon Canadian tire for the same reservoir gap. It’s stupid or mattery yeah. I have 11 my ass anyways. So what’s next for March.

Dan (38m 6s):
March was originally no, not a reasonably, but we’ve, we’ve always wanted to do Disney. And we were going to do Florida before the pandemic hit and the pandemic actually changed our, okay, we’re going to accelerate the out west trip and do that instead because we felt traveling domestically was going to, of course can be easier than it was. But now we want to get back on the Disney land is, is that right? Disney world is Florida Disneyland next year. So I think that’ll be our next big trip is similar 14 day or a 15 day sort of out to California and LA and, and surrounding area type thing. And maybe circle up the coast and around back,

Melina (38m 47s):
I have some podcasts you can listen to about that. Please take route 66 because it’s going to be amazing.

Dan (38m 53s):
Part of that inspiration actually is that is those podcasts and, and the journeys you’ve had probably won’t run into the same issues, but good on you for making it.

Melina (39m 4s):
I think that’s super exciting. And I think you’re right. Like the kids were after this trip, they were like, okay, we just need you to go into our rooms for like three days and not talk to anybody. Cause they’re like, okay, don’t get us wrong. We like being with you, but like it’s too close, too close. Right. And so we’re kind of hitting that end of it, where they want to be around us, but they’re still willing to go, which I think is fantastic. Yeah. Like, I mean the memories you’re building, they will never go away. Like with Dan and I both growing up RV with our families. It’s like, sometimes you hate it. But those end up being the sweetest memories

Dan (39m 34s):
I grew up basically, you know, in trailering too. And, and, and the experiences with nature and, and you can’t really replace that kind of stuff. And like you say, the memories that kids can have iPads and iPods and phones and all the electronic nonsense, we can give them that are all going to be thrown in the garbage in a couple of years. But these memories, hopefully the intention is something they can pass on to our grandchildren and beyond. Right. But once you get them, I think we all know they stopped complaining about being out with mom and dad. Don’t they? Right.

Janine (40m 6s):
I do love it. So we have, you know, the 15 and 17 year old suit. No, not so eager. They want to come. They definitely don’t want to be left behind, but when it’s over, it’s over and they’re good with that. And then there’s a little one still like at 10 and five, who just can’t where are we going next? Can we just stay in the RV? Can we go camping again? When are we going camping again, mom, can we go in the RV? Mommy, mommy, can we sleep in the RV? Even at the shop? Like, it’s they just want to be in the RV,

Dan (40m 34s):
Which, which speaks volumes in the comparison to the trip out east in the car where, you know, everybody was threatening to fly home. Versus we worked four times the difference and it was seventies,

Janine (40m 46s):
Coffee road trip. And I was ready to,

Dan (40m 49s):
She wasn’t, it was, you know, Montreal. She was done, but this trip out west and back, like I said, 7,500, whatever kilometers was, was a breeze. Almost. It was, nobody was really complaining. Are we there yet? We’re pretty minimal because we were stopping every two hours. It was more like, can we get going again rather than are we there yet? If that makes any sense. And yet California, route 66, that’s a, sounds like the next track.

Melina (41m 16s):
That’s super exciting. I love it.

Dan (41m 18s):
I’ll ask the hard hitting questions. Why the name Marge, where’s the name mark for me, Marge conjures ideas of a dependable, dirty, dirty take care of everything. Honestly, that’s what it is for medius. She’s not going to break down. Hopefully things that reliable needs to be. Yeah, she’s super reliable. And maybe Marge is the most reliable name I could think of. It’s short. You know, there you go.

Melina (41m 45s):
Maybe that’s our problem is the only name we could come up with for our trailer was Tracy. And I don’t know, Tracy is starting to let us down. After seven years,

Dan (41m 54s):
Never met us. Jerry. See, that’s not dangerous. I don’t know.

Melina (41m 58s):
Maybe we need a new name. We need to rename. That’s our problem.

Dan (42m 2s):
Oh, that’s fantastic. Thank you again, guys, for having us here. This has been a lot of fun.

Melina (42m 8s):
Well, we certainly appreciate it. I love listening to Janine talk. I just have like goosebumps. I’m just like picking up on your excitement and I’m so sad that we missed that part of the trip.

Dan (42m 17s):
I’m excited. I’m like, I almost want to skip the first couple of games of the hockey season and go back out on the road for a little bit. Yeah. W we’re experiencing some nice weather here. We’re thinking even those Thanksgiving. Can we get one more weekend in? Sure. Yeah, maybe we’ll see. Do we have to come back for the very first hockey game?

Melina (42m 37s):
Probably. Thank you, Ben and Janine for joining us, we are super happy to hear your experiences. We always aim to bring, you know, the full story of our li life to our listeners. Then it’s really important for us to bring people who can speak on different experiences than us, especially different methods of traveled. So thank you again. We are so appreciative of you being here. So with this episode, we end our journey into the Alberta Badlands. Next episode tune in on October 27th. That is our second annual spooktacular event where we profile five more haunted places. We’ve camped. And beginning of November, we’ll begin taking you on a journey to the Canadian Rockies as we detail RV life in Banff and Jasper. So until next time, goodbye.

Melina (43m 17s):
Bye.

Dan (43m 18s):
Bye