Arrived in Alberta on Sunday 27^th July and headed straight to Dinosaur Provincial Park. After a couple of weeks of driving across the prairies the Canadian Badlands were a sight for sore eyes.

Alberta is another Central Canadian Province much like Manitoba and Saskatchewan – area 255,500 sq. miles but with a much higher population at 4,025,100. Edmonton is its capital with 1,230,00 people but Calgary is slightly larger at 1,310,000 and that is where we were headed.

But first we had a date with some dinosaurs. A UNESCO Heritage Site, Dinosaur Provincial Park contains one of the world’s richest fossil beds.

So the Badlands (which I didn’t know) are so called because of the European Fur Traders from a couple of hundred years ago while making their way across Canada towards the Hudson Bay came across this pocket of landscape which (to quote a certain online encyclopedia) “a type of dry terrain where softer sedimentary rocks and clay-rich soils have been extensively eroded by wind and water”. They look like the surface of the moon!

Looking at it now it is near on impossible to imagine it as a subtropical paradise that 75 millions years ago was home to the dinosaurs! However a mind-boggling number of species have been found here – over 40 and still counting. The truly incredible thing however is the ‘bone beds’ in which paleontologists (who have only been really digging here since 1976, although fossils were found here in the early 1900’s) have found more than 300 specimens, which now grace museums around the world.  60% of the park has been designated a Natural Preserve to protect the extensive fossil fields and the valley’s fragile environment so is only accessible with a guide.

(One of the things they are so keen to protect here is their rattlesnakes and black widow spiders – really…. Protect them?!? The kids were delighted when they heard that and searched endlessly for them. The nearest we came was this bull snake. He was stretched out under the footpath bridge in the campsite. I managed to control my screaming enough for us all to watch him slither away into the rocks near the stream. He must haven been 8’ long. Yuck yuck yuck!!)

We went on two tours over our 3 days here into the Natural Reserve area. The first a hike to the ‘bone beds’. With temperatures pushing 40 degrees we were hoping it would be worth the walk. Oh it was! We ended up walking over literally hundreds of enormous dinosaur fossils all still sat in the silt and sandstone waiting to be dug up. The kids were in heaven. Our guide was fantastic and explained in great detail with demonstrations for the kids, which made the whole area come to life. Including a brilliant demonstration of how there comes to be huge rocks here that are totally out of place – basically the ice moved down here and brought with it huge amounts of rock and debris that it collected in it’s path, then when the ice receded it left the rocks behind. Kids totally got it (and in fact so did I!!).

The second tour on our last morning was a Fossil Safari. This time we were taken into the middle of the Nature Reserve and got to pick our way over the bone bed and with the help of a geologist (who sadly lacked quite the interactive fun nature of the previous guide but sure did know his stuff!) identify a huge variety of fossils. We saw everything from large teeth, huge bones from dinosaurs like duck bill dinosaurs.

But the highlight of the stay has to have been our sunset walk over the crazy rock formations, made up of years of different deposits of mudstone from when there were lakes in this area to sandstone from when fast flowing rivers ran here. It’s these changes in the regions weather from wet and tropical to dry desert that have brought such a stunning landscape and preserved all those dinosaur remains.

All been missing our Friday night currys so having stocked up with ghee and all the necessary spices weeks ago we finally got round to making a curry. Kids made great chapatis and we had John’s (well Rick Stein’s) chicken madras – yummy!!

We are all starting to feel a little bit of ‘small space madness’.   I’ve had a couple of proper sense of humour failures about pulling my clothes in and out of boxes from a small cupboard. And I found Charlie practicing gymnastics inside the van the other day which pretty much sent me over the edge. Also his incessant talking resulted in William using one of his knee bandages on Charlie’s mouth – fairly effective!

Luckily as I am about to ‘celebrate’ a rather large birthday on Friday we are checking into a hotel for a couple of nights. We have had written on the board in the van (which normally we use to remind us what day of the week it is and where we are / heading to next) how many sleeps it is until the hotel. 2 and counting as I write this. We are all looking forward to a bath – mine will be taken at the same time as a large gin and tonic!!