Drumheller, Alberta Badlands and the Royal Tyrrell Museum | Ep 40

Today is Episode 40 – and we are continuing our coverage of the RV Canucks 2021 Grand Tour with a two-part profile of the Drumheller Valley, AB. On the next two episodes, we’ll talk about the unique geography of the Alberta Badlands, the sometimes dark history of the Coal Capital of Canada—and of course look at the unique reasons Drumheller is considered the Dinosaur Capital of the World. 

Today we Discuss:

• RVing options in and around Drumheller
• The River Grove Campground and Cabins
• Downtown Drumheller and why we’re in love with it
• the Royal Tyrrell Museum

Be sure to keep your eye out for Episode 41, when we continue our journey in Drumheller by visiting the Hoodoos, Horsehoe Canyon, and learn a little about Drumheller’s Coal-Mining Past.

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Transcript

Melina (5s): Welcome travelers to the RV Canucks podcast, your biweekly dose of travel tips, tricks stories, and guides from our Canadian family of four, who roam all over north America and show you how you can travel further than you ever thought on your vacations from work I’m Molina. And I’m Dan today is episode 40 and we are continuing our coverage of the RV connects 2021 grand tour with a two-part profile of the drum Heller valley in Alberta, Canada. On the next two episodes, we’ll talk about the unique geography of the Alberta Badlands, the sometimes dark history of the coal capital of Canada. And of course, we’ll look at the unique reasons. Drum Heller is considered the dinosaur capital of the world, or Dan (48s): We’re also going to talk about what happens when your electric Jack gives up the ghost craps out, and you have to come up with some hillbilly solutions to get your truck and trailer decoupled. Melina (58s): But first we love to ask for a favor. If you listen on apple podcasts, please consider leaving a review of the podcast. Star reviews and written comments really do make a difference in who sees the podcast. And of course our goal is to bring great content to as many RV years as we can. And if you don’t already follow us on Facebook or Instagram, please do as you’ll be treated to a variety of video antics, Dan’s infrequent, but hilarious beef jerky reviews. And of course, images that go along with all our travels. So you can see for yourself what we experience on the road and save the posts that will help you plan your trips even better. So today we are talking Drumheller founded in 1911 and neatly nestled along the red deer river in an area known as coal canyon drum Heller was, as you could imagine by that name, a bustling coal town. Melina (1m 51s): Once upon a time, the last load of coal was shipped from the area in 1979. And Drumheller began a swift decline until large-scale paleontological works ramped up in the late seventies and early eighties. I’m sure I butchered that, but you know, dinosaur Diggy stuff. So the late seventies and early eighties were a period of time, which saw an eyeopening amount of new information about dinosaurs. And it also saw the creation of the Tyrell museum, which is now the Royal Tyrell museum. The Royal of course, being bestowed after a visit from queen Elizabeth. The second in 1990 and the museum opened in 1985, tourism is now the major industry in Drumheller due to the wide range of year round activities for amateur paleontologists hikers and thrill seekers alike. Melina (2m 38s): It is located just an hour and a half from Calgary three hours from Edmonton, just under five hours from Saskatoon and roughly 12 hours each from either Vancouver or Winnipeg, making it a prime location for a weekend getaway, long weekend trip, or a vacation full of exploration. There are so many things to do that we’ll probably need future episodes and future trips to cover them all. But today we’re going to cover Drumheller as an RV destination, a little bit about the town and our visit to the Royal Tyrell museum. But first let’s maybe talk about the Alberta Badlands. The Canadian Badlands span Southeast from Drumheller all the way through the Southwest corner of Saskatchewan and still further south into the states. Melina (3m 19s): So named by French explorers as being bad to cross the Badlands aren’t deserts. Exactly we’ll call them desert adjacent and they occur where rain is infrequent in areas where lonely soil retains similar rates of erosion and runoff, water washes away, large amounts of sediment resulting in a stunning landscape of multi-hued mesas, which are flat top mountains, deep winding galleys, and wind shaped hoodoos. These rocks are known in our house as bacon rocks. Something that I Lakota joined when she was, I dunno, maybe seven or eight, and we were going through Utah and she thought that the rocks, the layers of striations or different layers of rocks looked like streaky bacon or a slice of bacon, the stunning other worldly landscape of the Canadian Badlands teams with wildlife and unusual species from Prairie rattlesnakes and horned lizards to prickly pear cacti. Melina (4m 10s): It’s a great place for birdwatching back country, hiking, canoeing, cycling, or simply soaking up the wondrous sites. Now the Badlands are large and exploring all the secrets would be a trip right in itself, but the most famous places in Alberta to experience this would be in the Drumheller valley down in dinosaur, provincial park, Cypress Hills, provincial park, and riding on stone provincial park, which are all located along that swath of Badlands in Alberta. Now this trip, as we mentioned, we decided to stay in Drumheller and in the Drumheller valley, both for the convenience of being in a walkable location and to have a full service site within 15 minutes of all the areas, main attractions. Dan (4m 47s): Let me just paint the picture for you a little bit. I know that when we think of Western Canada, you feel like you leave Ontario, you drive across the Prairie’s until you run smack into the Rocky mountains, and then you get into the Rocky mountains. And the beauty of BC, the Badlands are this little gem that’s nestled in between the Prairie’s and the Rockies. And it’s really spectacular landscape. It reminded me a little bit of New Mexico and a little bit of Utah. And you said it reminded you of California to Las Vegas. Yeah. Melina (5m 17s): Yeah. It really does kind of appear out of nowhere. Like you are literally driving through Prairie and then you take a turn and you’re driving down the highway and you just start going down this long and winding road down, down, down into the valley. And it’s sort of funny, like how fast it changes from, you know, these beautiful wheat grasslands to kind of really a desert landscape or a semi-arid landscape. It’s, it’s just a really stunning part of the country. Dan (5m 41s): Really amazing. So did you want to talk a little bit about camping and drum Heller? Melina (5m 45s): Yeah, for sure. There are 23 campgrounds in and around Drumheller. So there is a ton of places to camp and there are there’s any type of camping you can imagine from Backwoods, camping to tent, camping, to unserviced, et cetera. You can find what you’re looking for. There are three RV parks closest to the downtown core. One is river Grove RV park. One is dinosaur RV park, and then there’s dinos nest RV park. So we stayed at river Grove, but all of them are within six minutes. Walk of downtown Drumheller, proper now river Grove, where we stayed has a total of 140 sites. There are 29 full service, 54, just power and water, nine unserviced RV sites, 44 tent sites and 10 cabins. Melina (6m 29s): So did you want to talk a little bit about a minute? Dan (6m 31s): Yeah. So first amended you we’ll talk about it does have wifi. The wifi is good for checking your email and simple web browsing. It’s not going to be good if you need to work from your trailer because you’re combining a work and vacation trip, and it’s not going to be good if you want to stream something from Netflix, let’s say, but, but it’s there. They have very clean washrooms. They have coin operated showers. They have a coin operated laundry mat. They have dishwashing stations. If you’re a tent camper, they have a small convenience store and they have an arcade and actually two playgrounds, one right at the front gate of the park, inside the park. And one just outside of the park, which is probably a city park of sorts. Melina (7m 10s): Both of them are great though. One thing I will say about the bathrooms, super clean, very, very, very clean. And that’s kind of always our mark of what makes a good RV park or not particularly with this park where the majority of sites don’t have full hookups. So you’re not going to get a ton of people showering in their trailers. They’re going to go to the bath houses to do that. And anytime I went in the bathrooms, they were spic and span. They were really clean. The staff onsite, super, super friendly. The sites are close together, but not in that typical kind of line them up and knock them down type RV park, like a Koa where everything’s kind of in the line. I would say that this RV park layout kind of, let’s just say it moves with the landscape landscape a little bit. Melina (7m 55s): Yeah. That’s the way to put it. And then I kind of gather that probably at some point, this RV park may have been smaller and perhaps they added on-sites, but maybe didn’t give an overall plan to, you know, city planning for like the rest of how the loops would lay out. So the loops were a little bit confusing. I know the girls and I even got lost on a walk one time because it’s not laid out like a typical campground, but with all of that being said, the sites, although they were close together, we’re still fairly private. I mean, you can see all your neighbors, but they were laid out in such a way that you’re not staring right in to somebody’s window. Dan (8m 30s): Yeah. It wasn’t too bad. And it works. There’s rigs of all different sizes in there. So I wouldn’t be worried about trying to get a big one or a small one in there. Melina (8m 38s): The only thing I will say about the laundry, although he was also clean, it was fairly expensive for a campground laundry. So it was $4 each to wash and dry. And anybody who regularly does laundry on the road knows that sometimes the dryers aren’t the best and you’re not going to get a full, dry the first time. So I really didn’t want to pay $12 a load. So we just packed up. We, I think we had about three loads to do so we took it in to downtown Drumheller or just past like old downtown. And there’s an ESO station there with a coin-op laundry at the back of that gas station, really super clean, fast, good dryers. It was a whole lot cheaper. And they also had a coin-op carwash on the site. So while we waited for our laundry, we gave the truck, Dan (9m 19s): You good wash. And it wasn’t too busy at that one. So you were able to use two or three dryers and washers all at the same time and get it all done in one big, go and not have to share with anybody else. Let’s talk a little bit about the dumping station here. When you exit the park, it’s not entirely clear through the signage, whether you go left or you go, right. But what you have to do is go through the dumping station. It’s right in the middle of this gravel area and you can dump. And there’s only one dumping station. Of course, it’s Sunday. It gets busy. Everybody wants to leave. At the same time, they actually had a person from the park there that would marshal you when it started to get backed up. And he would say, Hey, if you need to dump, feel free to go onto one of the empty sites that has a sewer hookup and just dump in there. So sometimes people did that. Dan (10m 0s): Sometimes people just stayed in line to dump at the dump station, but he would also say, Hey, if you want to go to Canadian tire, you want to go to the co-op that’s in town. You can dump there as well. Cause they both had dump stations. And I think what we came to learn in Western Canada, and I guess in Northwestern, Ontario, too, there’s dump stations and many towns. And I think people are used to just pulling into a dump station. That’s not at the park and dumping their, Melina (10m 23s): The best way I would pinpoint this layout is like, when you pull into the park, you actually stop right at the dump station to even go check in for your site. So the dump station is sort of in the very middle, in almost like an island where the road goes on, either side of it. If that makes sense. Dan (10m 39s): Yeah. It’s not tucked away. That’s for sure. They also sell firewood at the park. I noticed that whether you’re going to buy your firewood at a local gas station or a Canadian tire, it’s all comes from the same person, little bit more expensive in the park, but you know, they need to keep the lights on was a little bit cheaper Canadian tire because we were already picking up some stuff about the failed Jack, which I’ll talk about a little bit later. So, you know, I think you’ve got everything there. I’d say this is a very much a family friendly park. There were lots of kids, but it was not a party park. It was not a noisy park. So there’s young families, their kids are up riding their bikes, doing what kids do. They went to bed. They probably tuckered out their parents. They all went to bed and then everybody got back up the next morning and did it all over again. Dan (11m 19s): But a nice, quiet part. Definitely not a party. Melina (11m 22s): Yeah, for sure. It seems definitely like a weekend destination type of park. And I will say the moment people checked out within like half an hour, somebody was there cleaning up the fire pits and like setting it up for the next guest. So it’s very much a high volume park. So they, they kind of have that part down to a science. I think location-wise, it’s absolutely fantastic for downtown Drumheller to right across the street from kind of the focal point, I guess, of downtown Drumheller, which is the world’s tallest dinosaur, that’s kind of their claim to fame, which is, which is actually an, a viewing platform that you can climb up. And that is also the tourist information. So that’s almost right across the road from the campground. It’s also where the town splash pad is. Melina (12m 2s): There’s an indoor outdoor pool. So I mean, there’s a ton of stuff for you to do right outside the gates of the park that if you have kids and you’re staying there for a couple of days and just looking for a day where you can just kind of hang out near the trailer. Perfect location. Dan (12m 15s): Yep. Absolutely. Did you want to talk about the town Melina (12m 18s): A little bit? I do want to talk about the town. I actually have a crush. I have a town crush. It’s true. I love Drumheller. Like I love it. I love the downtown. It’s super quaint. I think they are trying their darndest. And I think they are being very, very successful at refocusing Drumheller as a tourist area. The downtown is very clean. There are still some issues with, you know, maybe a store fronts that are still empty, but quite honestly, I think, you know, from what I’ve seen, the marketing materials, the amount of effort that the town puts into Drumheller as a tourist destination, as a foodie destination, as a destination, you know, within the dinosaur capital of the world, like they’re really doing all the right things. Melina (13m 3s): And I would say in like 10 to 15 years, it would definitely be sort of like a Fergus Alora of Alberta or maybe something like the Oakenoggen like Penticton, where people really go and spend their summers in that area because there’s so much to do. I just love it. I love it so much. Dan (13m 19s): And money is going into this town from the municipal government and from the provincial government thought the schools are new. The hospitals new, the community center and arena are relatively newer buildings. So there’s definitely money going in. This is not a dying town. This is re blossoming Melina (13m 34s): For sure. And one of the things that I actually really enjoyed because we were there on a weekend, the Friday, Saturday night, they had a portion of the old downtown core shut down. They had a portion of one of the streets shut down and they had, you know, just free games like ladder ball and bean bag toss. And it was Ray at the Legion. The Legion patio was open and right across the street from the Legion, there’s sort of a town square with a stage. And each night they had a different band just playing great, you know, cover tunes. It was a really good vibe. They have an adorable little theater called the Napier theater, which is a movie theater, but they were open. They, I don’t know if they were playing movies that night, but they had it open and they had the concession open and popcorn that you could buy and walk around the town with. Melina (14m 16s): Like it was a really great vibe. I really, really, really enjoyed it. There are some great restaurants there for a town of Drumheller size. There is a fantastic array of food. And I mean like a lot of ethnic diversity, there’s a really famous eatery there called Bernie and the boys, which was featured on, you got to eat here, which has sort of, I guess the Canadian version of diners drive-ins and dives. We did not get to eat at Bernie and the boys, which I am still very disappointed about because they were closed because they were hosting several private functions that weekend. But we did stop by and pick up some of their all-purpose seasoning at one of the local grocery stores. And it is fantastic. And I actually wish that I had bought a second bottle. So if you are in Drumheller and you get to eat at Bernie and the boys like message us and let us know how it is. Melina (14m 59s): Cause it looks fantastic. There is a great micro brewery in Drumheller called valley brewing, which looks stunning. It looks like it’s fairly brand new. There’s a great outdoor patio setup with patio lights and lawn chairs. And you can just hang out and it’s the perfect place to grab a pint or a flight or do whatever and just hang out. It perplex me as an Ontarian that there was no food there. We walked in when Bernie and the boys was closed, like hoping for dinner. And it was like, all they serve is beer. And that surprised me. Dan (15m 28s): Yeah. Because if you’re not from Ontario and Ontario, if you have a liquor establishment where you’re serving drinks, you have to have food. Even if it’s just a bag of chips behind the bar, Melina (15m 38s): That being said, the beer looked fantastic, but we were really hungry. So we ended up eating elsewhere. But yeah, although Ontario loves its red tape. So maybe it’s not all that odd out in Alberta, but there were a fair few number of restaurants that I did notice that were closed, that we would’ve liked to eat at. But a lot of them had notices in the window saying, you know, sorry, closed until further notice because we are short-staffed, which has, seems to be a bit of a COVID problem in the Western. Dan (16m 5s): Yeah. This was not a drum Hiller problem. We noticed lots of places where there were help wanted signs and provinces because they just can’t get people to come to work. And it’s definitely COVID related. Melina (16m 16s): I would say one thing about drum Heller in terms of its walkability and its ride ability for bike rides. Fantastic. Absolutely great. It is clean. It is safe. There’s great trail maps up and all of the trails, most of them seem to be paved. The ones that go in and around the river, just a really fascinating town to just ride your bike in the neighborhoods and see some of the houses. Dan (16m 38s): I just, I want to emphasize, it’s not about the bike lanes on residential streets because there aren’t any, and it’s not about the trails. There are a few trails to ride your bikes on. It’s just a cool little town. It’s really easy to ride your bike up and down the streets because it’s not super busy with traffic and you don’t have to feel unsafe. It’s just cool to explore my bike and cover more real estate. Melina (16m 60s): The world’s tallest dinosaur. So that seems a bit kitsch. You know, if you are inclined to go to Drumheller and be like, there is no way I’m paying $5 to walk up into a Tyrannosaurus his mouth. I highly suggest you do it. The girls and I did it one night while Dan was back at the trailer making dinner and the girls had asked every single day, and this is like at the ages of 13 and 16, pretty much. They really wanted to go up in the dinosaur’s mouth. So we do not have small children anymore, but even they were fascinated. So I thought, okay, fine. You go inside the tourist information center, which in itself is fantastic. It is very old school. They have like a physical board up that lists all of the hotels, all of the campgrounds, whether they have vacancy, what kind of sites they have, they’re really helpful, really great staff in there. Melina (17m 46s): And we paid to go up. The world’s child is dinosaur, who is a woman. Her name is Tyra. We found out that little tidbit while we were there. The view from the top is just fantastic. We went just as the sun was setting over the red deer river, it is a stunning view of the river. You get the water tower of the town in the background. It’s just, it’s really worth it. And only one family or one group is allowed up at the top at a time right now, obviously due to COVID. So we did wait maybe half an hour, 45 minutes. And how it, how they had it set up was you would wait. And when it was your turn, you would climb up to the first landing and there’s sort of three landings as you go up. Melina (18m 28s): And the girls and I counted how many stairs and now I’m, I, I don’t know if I wrote it down, it was around a hundred stairs or something like that, just over a hundred stairs, but there’s three landings. And you go up to the first landing and there’s kind of a stopping area and you have to wait for one group to come down and then the next group goes up and you go to their landing and you wait. So there’s only one group outside in the mouth of the dinosaur at a time, which is really all it can fit. Cause it’s quite small, but the view is definitely worth it. I mean, it doesn’t take a lot more than a few minutes, but you’ll get some great photos. You’ll get a great view and the kids will really enjoy it. So I highly recommend that absolutely Dan (19m 3s): Groceries groceries. So there are three places in town to get groceries. There’s a small Walmart on the outskirts of town. There’s an extra foods which would be like a fresh go tight, no frills, no frills type grocery store. And there’s a freezin or Freston brothers grocery store. That was the one that we used got, Melina (19m 22s): Well, there’s amazing stuff in this grocery store. It reminded me actually of the grocery store in Moab, where we found all that great stuff. Like it’s just like a small town. Like I think there’s, it’s a small chain, let’s say, but, oh my gosh, they have like fresh, fresh baked goodies wheat, a ton of sourdough stuff. We got sourdough cinnamon buns. We got sourdough bread that had full clothes of roasted garlic. And it was amazing. We’ve got these amazing soup kits. Oh, these frozen potato skins. And they were potato skins that were fully dressed and frozen that we just popped on the barbecue and cooked one night like, oh, Dan (19m 60s): I also want to say that we’ve got some fruits and vegetables, milk and eggs. You know, the healthy stuff. We didn’t just eat cinnamon buns and sourdough toast Melina (20m 8s): For yourself. I get a lot of cinnamon buns and sourdough toast, but it’s more of a premium grocery store in costs. Like there was a Starbucks inside, et cetera, but holy cow, it was fantastic. I really, really highly recommended. Dan (20m 21s): And it’s also kind of located in kind of the center of town, we’ll say near the Canadian tire and Mark’s work warehouse, big parking lot stuff like that. Melina (20m 29s): There are a lot of dinosaurs found in that area and that swath of Badlands, hence why there’s a museum and dinosaur provincial bark and all of that in that area of Alberta. But the CA the town, you know, is really done a great job with that. They have a series of dinosaur statues all throughout the town. So picture you like those moose we have in Ontario, which I don’t even know how many of them are standing anymore. That was kind of a thing back in the Dan (20m 53s): Day, five, 10 years ago in Toronto, where Melina (20m 54s): You’d have gigantic moose and they were all painted up. It’s kind of like that, except the theme is dinosaurs on vacation. So you’ll see these dinosaur statues and some of them are two feet tall, and some of them are like 15 feet tall where they’re all posed. They’re sitting on benches. They’re just like hanging out in the town, they’re driving their motorcycle down the road and you can take pictures with them. And it’s just, you know, there’s a bit of a dinosaur trail. You can take a walking map and you can take your kids around and meet all the dinosaurs and take their photo. And it just makes for a really fun night if you’re wandering the town. So I guess on services, do we want to talk about the services we encountered when the Jack broke? Dan (21m 29s): Yeah, so we had a little bit of a test of marital bliss on this. We pulled in on a Friday around three 30 or four into the camp site and the electric Jack wouldn’t work. And so for those of you that have maybe not joined since the beginning of the podcast, we have a 2900 2900 foot. We have a 29 foot trailer and it’s 7,500 pounds dry plus all of our stuff inside it. So it’s not a small trailer. And the Jack had been working slowly and I had attributed that to a bad battery. And in fact, we did have a bad battery, but by the time we pulled into the RV park, the electric Jack failed to go up and down to the point where when we put in a new fuse hit the up button, it would blow the fuse right away. Dan (22m 16s): Jack was really hot. We need to be able to raise and lower the tongue of the trailer a couple of times, so we can take the sway bars off. And so we can detach the truck from the trailer. Normally in an electric Jack, there is a manual override, which lets you crank by hand to raise and lower the trailer. However, the entire Jack was seized. I put all of my weight behind it and it was only barely raising like maybe Melina (22m 40s): An eighth of an inch. Every time we Dan (22m 42s): Reached the point where we were able to get the sway bars off the ball of the hitch was still underneath the tongue of the trailer. And so in the greatest of hillbilly redneck solutions, Dan stood on the hitch of the truck, which pushed the whole backend of the truck down, which was just enough room for Molina to hop in the driver’s seat and pull forward. Now you want to paint the picture of kind of the layout of the site and why it’s important that we get detached. Melina (23m 7s): Yeah. So this, there was two sites in the entire park that had signs on the site posts that said, if you’re parking in these two sites, you basically have to pull all the way forward and then you need to unhitch and you need to park your truck at the back of the site. Find no problem. We were unhooking anyway, because we were planning on doing day trips. So while all this was going on, we were basically in the middle of the road because that’s where the truck happened to be when we pulled all the way forward. So that everything lined up for the services. I’m sure. Well, actually, in fact, I know there were people out there staring at us as we were trying to get this unhooked and Dan standing on the truck so that, you know, it lowered enough to clear. And so I could pull ahead while he’s standing on the ball hitch, like it was just a whole holy disaster, but we did get it enough so that I could pull the truck out. Melina (23m 49s): And then Dan hopped off and the truck kind of popped back up again. And luckily enough, the trailer was level enough. It wasn’t perfectly level, but it was level enough to run the fridge. It was loving enough to run the AC and it was level enough to make us feel like we weren’t going to fall off the bed when we were sleeping. So we left well enough alone and went in search of a sudden, Dan (24m 8s): This was after we had vigorous debate about whether we were going to try and lower it. And Molina said, we should just leave well enough alone, which is what we did. So I’m smart. Needless to say, we went to Alberta, we saw a rodeo, regrettably. It was a goat rodeo of our own making. So now that we have the truck decoupled from the trailer, we still need to be able to get the trailer back onto the truck. And we still need to be able to fix the electric Jack. So Molina found the name of a very helpful mobile RV technician, who I gave a phone call to. And he was very helpful to us. He said, listen, your trailers five or six years old, it sounds like your electric Jack needs to be replaced. The entire thing is seized, which is why it won’t work in manual mode. Dan (24m 50s): And unfortunately he didn’t have a new one to put on and that’s not his fault, but he suggested that we go to the local auto parts store. So we left the campsite, got to the auto parts store for, they closed at five o’clock on Friday, really helpful guy at the parts desk, showed them a picture of what we needed. He went down and we checked the shelves together. Unfortunately he didn’t have what we needed. And he said, listen, we can’t get a delivery on Saturday. Nothing comes in on Monday. I wouldn’t be able to get you anything until Tuesday. And we had to leave on Monday. So he suggested that we go to Canadian tire. So we went across the street to Canadian tire where it was self-serve in the, in the parts aisle and they did not have what we needed. Dan (25m 31s): And we needed a Jack that could hold 3,500 pounds and it had to have a certain bolt configuration. So like I shouldn’t put too much blame on Canadian tire at this point. Melina (25m 39s): Yeah. At this point we were just looking for a manual Jack that we could just use to get us through the rest of the trip. Cause we still had, you know, almost two weeks left of the trip. So unfortunately it was the weight limit. That was the problem. We could only find one that was max 2,500 pounds. So in walks, Molina’s beautiful brain, which decided that we needed a 15 ton bottle Jack pretty much to help us. And the reason is because of the weight distribution sway bar system we have, when you hook up your ball hitch, you then need to raise the truck and the trailer a little bit in order to be able to get the bars on properly. So the entire hitch system comes with sort of like a big crowbar that’s custom designed to get your bars onto the hitch. Melina (26m 23s): And that requires a whole lot of manpower, a whole lot of muscle, and it’s really difficult to do so even at the best of times, you do need to raise that hitch up even a little bit. If not though, if not the whole way to take that pressure off so we can get the bars on our dilemma was okay, well, we can reverse the process that we used to unhook and have Dan stand on the bumper, which is what he ended up having to having to do. And I would carefully back up while he gave me directions because unfortunately he had to stand in front of the backup camera just where he was positioned on the bumper of the truck to get us backed in. And then when he hopped off the truck would raise and slide into the ball hitch, which was fine, but we could not move it up anymore to get the bars on. Melina (27m 9s): And the bars really, we’re not going to go on if hitch was too low. So my idea was to take this 15, 10 bottle Jack. And we could use that once the ball hitch was connected, we could use that to raise the entire hitch mechanism, put the bars on and then lower the bottle Jack. And it would, it would hook up. So in theory, fantastic idea. In reality, we actually didn’t need it because we left the truck slightly unlevel. They was high enough. Once we hooked up that we could get those bars on just by sheer force. Dan (27m 41s): So day two of the goat rodeo finals, we managed to get hooked up and we managed to get back on the road. And the bottle Jack has since been returned to Canadian tire because we never opened it. But needless to say, the story continues because on Monday morning, we’re rolling down the highway. We still need to get a Jack manual or electric to finish the rest of our week and a half, two weeks on the road. So I was able to phone ahead to a RV dealership in the outskirts of Calgary range, land RV spoke to the fellow at the parts desk. He had the right Jack and said, maybe I can get somebody in the shop to install it for you. So we pulled in, I went to the parts desk. He goes, this is the Jack, but I can’t get anybody to install it. The shop is completely full, but you’re welcome to change the Jack yourself in our parking lot. Dan (28m 26s): So Melina (28m 26s): That’s what we did in 10 degree weather. So Dan (28m 29s): It was a kind of rainy, cold windy. We pulled around behind the dealership. We had to take the bikes off the trailer because the bikes are over top of the old Jack. We had to disconnect three bolts and one electrical connection. So for anybody who’s, you did it with the toolkit, that standard toolkit that we Melina (28m 48s): Always tell you to keep in your truck, right? Dan (28m 50s): No, there was no odd ball sized wrenches or ratchets or anything else. It was all straightforward stuff. Three bolts, one electrical connection took the old one off the new one fit into the same holes, same connection. And we were off to the races was really simple. I kind of knew how to do it. I confirmed it on a three minute YouTube video when we were in and out of that dealership in an hour. Melina (29m 12s): And the important thing is if we hadn’t had that toolkit, I’m sure the dealership would have been fine to lend us a couple of wrenches to get it done. But having that as kind of a safety net in your truck, once we used the Jack a couple more times a week and then go and just re tighten the bolts and make sure that it stays nice and taken care of. Dan (29m 29s): Yeah. Cause after you’ve used it a couple times, just go back and double check. Everything’s still nice and tight and stuff like that. Melina (29m 35s): Okay. So that’s the Sega of the Jack. So let’s back up, back to drum Heller again, and we will talk about the Royal Tyrol museum. So I keep stumbling on this cause we constantly call it the Royal Tyrrell museum, which is kind of when you read it. That’s how my brain says. It says it, say it. And Dan and I have been calling it the Royal Tyrrell like always in my family, we call it the Royal Tyrrell. It’s not it’s T role because I found that out on the internet today. So it is actually named after Joseph B Tyrol who on August 12th, 1884, stumbled upon a 70 million year old dinosaur skull. The first of its species ever found just a few kilometers from where the museum now stands. Melina (30m 17s): And it is Canada’s only museum solely dedicated to the study of ancient life. So the royalty roll museum is located seven and a half kilometers. So just shy of five miles from downtown Drumheller and it’s located in Midland provincial park. So you think that it might be located in dinosaur provincial park. However, that park is roughly an hour and 45 minutes Southeast of the royalty role. So stay tuned in early October, as we are going to talk to our friends, Janine and Ben who are brand new motor homing, family of seven, and they’ve ventured west the summer a couple of weeks before we did. And they were able to visit and spend some time in dinosaur provincial park, which was kind of the highlight of Janine’s life. So we are going to hear from them, get their impression of the area and their tips on what to see the royalty Royal museum holds one of the world’s largest collections of dinosaurs. Melina (31m 7s): And it’s recognized as a center of excellence for paleontology. The collection is actually so vast that there are still over 2,500 unprepared specimens in the collection, just awaiting further investigation, a lot of which can be seen within the museum itself. So there’s sort of like a glass walled gallery, which during working hours is where teams work to investigate the discoveries that they found, extract them from the casings. When they come in from the field, it’s a really, really neat process to watch and take note. However, if you visit on a weekend that the area might be void of active work, if nobody’s actually on duty, but it’s still neat to kind of look into those windows and see how those processes are done and look at the, the equipment that they use to do it. Dan (31m 47s): Yeah. So let me talk about this museum real quick. My impression we’ve been to like the RO Royal Ontario museum in Toronto, we’ve been to the Smithsonian’s in Washington. We’ve seen some of the great museums in London, England, and they’re all great museums. This museum, probably more than any of those museums is something for everybody for all ages and not to talk those museums down. Cause like the air and space museum is still my favorite museum in the world. They’re not as stuffy. There’s something for everybody. For every young kid can be engaged. Adult parents can be engaged, grandma and grandpa can be engaged. So there’s something for everybody they’ve really done a great job, curating it for Melina (32m 26s): It’s very interactive as well. A lot of hands-on displays, you know, stuff at all. I levels to keep, you know, like Dan said, everybody of every age group entertained, it’s just, it’s really well laid out and it’s not overly large. If you’re moderately able or even if you need the accessibility help, they rent strollers. They rent wheelchairs. You can bring your ECV scooters in with you like it’s, but it’s a reasonable size. It’s not like a mammoth mammoth building, no pun intended, wooly mammoth, sorry. It’s late at night. You guys is not a mammoth building where you just are exhausted. By the time you finished walking the indoor exhibits, a couple other things I would say to know before you go, is that a large, a significantly large portion of museum activities are actually out of doors. Melina (33m 13s): Now they’re all optional, but there was a lot of outdoor time if you want that. So there is a signed interpretive trail, which is out behind the museum. It is free. It takes about an hour. If you’re going to stop and read all of the plaques, there’s also connector trails, which go off museum property into Midland provincial park itself. There is an outdoor simulated dinosaur dig, which is an additional $15 per person. It runs on weekends and it’s about 75 minutes long. And that’s for the kiddos to kind of do a simulated dig and pull out fossils. There is a dyno site hike, which is kind of cool. It’s $10 per person. It enables you to go out into the Badlands off the beaten path with a guide from the museum and see what kind of fossils you can find that takes an hour and a half. Melina (33m 54s): And then there’s also the seven wonders of the Badlands, which is a 60 minute tour. It’s $8 a person. And it sends you out with a geologist to find out what the rocks are around the museum say about the changing environment of Alberta. So with all of that being said and all of those things outside, there’s also a playground that’s opened in the summer months outside. You basically want to pack for the weather. So bring a jacket, sturdy shoes, water backpack, a hat sunscreen, et cetera. If you plan on utilizing any of those outdoor experiences. Dan (34m 22s): Yep. So let’s talk a little bit about parking. When you pull in, you’re going to pull in nice smooth road. You’re going to drive up. Now. We did not bring the trailer with us. We just brought the truck, but the parking lot was packed. It was like trying to find a spot at Walmart on Christmas Eve. If you’re, if you’re, you can bring your truck and trailer there or your RV, if that’s the case, you should go straight to the overflow. Parking, give you a word of advice as drive up, slow, head to the overflow parking. But the signage isn’t the best signage in the world. And you don’t want to make a turn prematurely and find yourself stuck where it’s going to be hard to back up. Melina (34m 56s): So yeah, automatically, if you’re towing, just head to the lower overflow parking lot. During the summer months, there is a tram that runs between the museum up on the hill and the lower parking lot that will just take people back and forth all day long. There is no overnight parking, no boondocking. There is no camp overnight camping and Midland provincial park. It is a day use only parks. So unfortunately it can’t be used for any of those uses when we were there. And obviously we are recording this in September of 2021. There are still COVID restrictions in place. Masks were optional when we went, however, they are now mandatory as of September 3rd, all over Alberta, you must pre-book the tickets in advance. And in saying that I was actually very surprised with how busy it, because when you go online, you have to, pre-book prepay for tickets. Melina (35m 41s): You have to pick your time slot during the day. And there’s like a three hour window where you can pick your time slot to visit. And when we got there, like when I say it was busy, it was busy for like non COVID times. There was, there was swaths of people at every exhibit. I feel like we walked through some of the exhibits a whole lot quicker than we otherwise would have because there was like people just like reaching over your shoulder to take a photo. And like, it was like sardines in some of the exhibits, not a lot of distancing, et cetera, but I don’t know. I don’t know what it was the end of the summer though. Dan (36m 10s): Yeah. Summer vacation for school students was coming to a close within it, not weaker. They were going back to school the next week. So I think people were trying to squeeze in one last trip. Listen, if you have the opportunity to do it in the shoulder seasons, when kids are in school, that probably be a great time to stop by when it’s not too busy. Melina (36m 26s): So the cafeteria is currently closed as well. However, they did have food trucks onsite. I would imagine that’s probably only for the summer season, but it is the kind of place where you can find a grassy spot to sit down. You can find a bench. If you want to pack a picnic with you, just make sure you’re taking all of your garbage out with you in terms of pricing, super reasonable for the quality of museum that you’re getting. Adults are $21. Seniors are 14 youth, seven to 17 years of age are $10. And the under seven crowd is free. Now for anybody in the military community with a CF one card, you actually get free admittance. However, in COVID times, they want you to buy online for full price. Melina (37m 7s): And then when you get to the gate presents your CF one card and they will actually refund you the cost of the admission, which is fantastic. So summer season for the royalty role is May 15th to August 31st, every year. It’s open every day from 10 to five and the fall hours run from September 1st to May 14th. They’re open Tuesday to Saturday, 10 to five, and they are open every holiday Monday. Other than that, they are closed on Mondays. As I mentioned, stroller and wheelchair rentals, you can rent them for $3 a day, which is fantastic. And they have these great fun books for kids that they can sort of read and follow along and, you know, have scavenger hunts and look for exhibits and sort of draw their own conclusions about what they’re seeing. Melina (37m 47s): And those are only $6 and you can get those at the gate when you sign in. So in terms of accessibility, like I said, it’s not a huge museum. However, the trail Outback, you do need to go up several stairs to get to the trail, which is kind of further up the hill than the museum is. But you do go through some elevation changes on that trail. It’s mostly, it’s paid for some of the way. And then the rest of it is just gravel. But I would say you would probably need to be able to walk five or six city blocks. If you can do that, you can do the trip. Dan (38m 16s): Yeah. There was people of all ages. There was toddlers right up to senior citizens. So don’t talk yourself out of taking those trail. Melina (38m 22s): So timeline, Dan (38m 23s): Timeline, I’d say you probably want a budget most of the day, this is going to be the main event of your day. So don’t try and schedule two big things on this day. This’ll be your big thing. And I think, you know, it’s going to take up most of your day if you’re going to go and see everything properly. Melina (38m 38s): So one cool thing, and you’ll actually see some signs at the museum, which doesn’t only apply to the museum. It actually applies to everywhere in the area. And that is about fossil discovery. So the rule of thumb, I guess, or what they ask you to do is that if you were out exploring and one of the great things about the Drumheller valley is it really is like the wild west in terms of, there’s not a lot of restrictions, not a lot of roped off areas or, you know, fences or gates, like you are free to roam in the Badlands. And so if you find a fossil or in interesting unique discovery on your walk, you’re asked to take a photo of it, preferably with something beside it to sort of provide scale. Melina (39m 19s): And of course, leave the fossil in place that is absolutely illegal to remove fossils from any area in Alberta, but use GPS. If you can, on your device to maybe drop a pin into Google maps of where you are and make note of the Latin long tattooed and email it to the museum with your findings and they will go and research it. Dan (39m 38s): This is only common sense. And they actually had a really good one of the exhibits did a really great job at talking about how some of the countries that do natural resource exploration are one of their main contributors of new fines. So yeah, it’s common sense. Don’t be taking that stuff in high net and keeping it for yourself. Melina (39m 55s): So that is the basics on the museum. Definitely has to be on your to-do list. If you go into the drum Heller area, as far as the next episode, we are going to talk about the rest of our trip, which was the world famous, who dues, horseshoe canyon a little bit about the coal mining history and some of the coal mines you can visit in the area. There’s a great suspension bridge. There’s fantastic ghost towns. There is a ton of stuff still to cover, and that’s why we broke up this episode into two parts. So we will address all of the rest of that in two weeks. Have a great couple of weeks, everybody bye-bye.