Blog Archives: October, 2007
Dinosaurs and trains
T-rex at the Royal Tyrrell Museum Our next stop was Drumheller, Alberta, which is in south central Alberta and the home of the Royal Tyrrell Museum, one of the world’s best dinosaur museums. You can see hundreds of dinosaur fossils, include this t-rex. There’s one room right at the beginning with some of their best fossils on display like precious jewels.
Hoodoos All around Drumheller are the Albertan badlands, where water has worn away the ground over long periods of time and exposed layers of soil and minerals in the ground. Some times a hard layer is above some softer layers, and thus the softer layers erode more quickly, leaving odd pillars called hoo doos, which you can see in the picture at right.
Waterton Park car pulling into Edmonton station I’m writing this from the Via Rail station in Edmonton. We’ve been in Edmonton only briefly, although I happily had the chance to meet up with my Oxford housemate Jane and take a tour of the Alberta legislature. I’m about to board The Canadian, Via Rail’s flagship train that goes from Vancouver to Toronto. It’s a two day ride from Edmonton to Toronto, but it should be quite scenic and relaxing, especially with no connection to the real world for all that time. We’ve got a sleeping car with a dome on top, so I’m looking forward to watching the Canadian landscape go by; I expect there will be a lot of it!
Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump
Head Smashed In sign For a long time, ever since I first heard of it in Dave Barry’s Only Travel Guide You’ll Ever Need, I’ve wanted to visit Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump, a UNESCO World Heritage Site. According to the Wikipedia article about the location, “when [Dave Barry] found out about the site, he called the phone number of the Interpretive Centre, and the telephone was answered, ‘Head-Smashed-In, may I help you?’ He claims this was a highlight of his life.”
Head Smashed In Buffalo Jump The obvious part of the story behind the name is that native people used to drive buffalo over the cliff (at right) to kill the buffalo and then made use of the meat and other parts of the animal. There were many buffalo jump sites through western North America, and they would not necessarily be used every season, sometimes lying unused for generations until conditions were right (buffalo in the right spot at the right time of year, the spiritual exercises completed, the tribes in the right location, the wind blowing the right way).
There are two things that make this site special. First, it has extensively preserved archaeological remains since it was used over a period of up to 9000 years. Second, a foolish young brave once wanted to see the buffalo jump from a little bit closer up, and when the rush of buffalo came over the cliff, they landed on him and he ended up dead with his head smashed in. And that is definitely worth a UNESCO World Heritage site!
Bike trip to Elmira
Bike trip to Elmira On Saturday I cycled from Waterloo to Elmira via St. Jacobs to visit my friend Connie (at right) who lives in Elmira. This was the first major bike ride I’ve done in the Waterloo area, even though I once lived with some major cyclists who seemed to know every nook and cranny in the region. 
Connie and I biking With the help of Bikely.com, a website I recently discovered that integrates Google maps with bike routes, I plotted out a route to Elmira that avoided highways and went through the town of St. Jacobs: 22km total. We then did an 18km loop through the Woolwich Reservoir and I cycled back home, giving me a grand total of 62 km for the day. Not too bad, and I wasn’t so sore that I couldn’t bike to school the next morning, so a success, I would say!
