Driving into Drumheller and the Badlands Suspension Bridge

Canola Field

The Badlands

This week our outing took us past canola and wheat fields. The big open air of the prairie until you hit an area that takes you back millions of years.

The Canadian Badlands are breathtaking. Glaciers deposited mounds of rocky debris seperated

by depressions.

This land consists of coulees and sand dunes. Over thousand of years the wind, rain, frost have eroded the fine fine sandstone into steep slopes with very unusual shapes.

The most important finds have been the dinosaurs. Over 35 species have been found around the Badlands of Alberta.

Alberta's Badlands continue to erode at a rate of 4 milimeters per year and continually expose new dinosaur fossils.

Drumheller has a world class museum showing the varieties of the dinosaurs. We had Lea's grandchildren with us and enrolled ourselves in a fossil class. The kids where thrilled to make a fossil impression of various bones.

You will find many animals and plants in this area that can only be found here and nowhere else in the world.

We continued our journey to just outside of Drumheller to the town of Rosedale. A coal mine was opened in 1912 on the other side of the river. In 1919 a cable car system was built to transport the men and coal. Then in the 1930's the suspension bridge was built by the CPR with a rail line to the mine to help improve the transportation of the coal. The mine closed in 1957.

We did a little geocaching and enjoyed the hot day. Unfortunately we were not successful with finding this cache but there are millions our there to find.