I’m not sure if this is Daegan’s work or Gareth’s, but I thought it was neat way to represent some of their knowledge about dinosaurs. This is a plant-eater (hence the green leaves in the stomach), which also swallows rocks (gastroliths—the black ovals) to help grind up the plant foods, much like birds do today. I also see some neck vertebra. I’ll have to put this back on the table again and see what they do to complete the project.

When we got back to the hotel, we went for a swim. This was our first time staying at this hotel in Edmonton (the Hampton); it’s quite new and there was a good deal on rooms. And the pool area was fantastic! There was a little kid splash pool that Gareth enjoyed, a larger pool for swimming and playing volleyball, and a large hot tub. No waterslide, but IMO, if you’re gonna do waterslides in Edmonton, you’re heading to the waterpark at West Edmonton Mall anyways.

We had lots of fun. Gareth created a game he dubbed “Dino Ball”, that if you are familiar with “Calvin Ball” from the Calvin and Hobbes comic strip, seemed to have the same rules (or lack of them–you just make ‘em up as you go along). There was throwing and catching:

‘alligator wiggling’:

running and kicking (with the occasional ‘hand ball’)

and general chasing around:

Daegan and I spent quite a bit of time in the larger pool too, as he is now able to swim and LOVES to race me:

Gareth still needs to be in parental arms in the deep pool, and loves goofing around (Daegan practicing his back floats behind us):

He also likes practicing his swimming kicks:

Jim preferred the hot tub:

and Daegan joined him from time to time too, clearly enjoying his birthday trip:

After our swim we headed off to Padmanadi, our fave veggie restaurant in Edmonton. The boys drew in their travel journals to pass the time as we were waiting for our food; it was clear the bug class left an impression:

We stuff ourselves silly with delish food, like this kung pao chick’n (wheat gluten based):

And on our way out, who should we bump into but Katie, the instructor from our Insect class, who was having dinner with friends! How odd in a city of a million people, don’t ya think?

Daegan walking and chatting with the instructor Katie as we headed to the greenhouses. We found out that she’s taken all of John Acorn’s classes at the University of Alberta, and as he is one of Daegan’s entomological idols, they found plenty to talk about:

Katie explaining how the butterflies climb out of the boxes behind her once they emerge from their chrysalises:

Looking for butterflies in our favourite butterfly house in Alberta—it’s so lush!:

The class getting our instructions for the scavenger hunt in the arid greenhouse. We were to find tallest cactus, the cactus that looked like a hairy old man, the one of the prettiest flowers, the one that did the best camouflage job, etc.: 

Here’s the smelliest flowers, from the “carrion plant.” By smelling like rotting meat, the flowers attract pollinators like flies. And yes, we all got close and smelled it—once was enough!

We then moved on to the “plants and people” house, which showcases a wide variety of plants humans use for all kinds of purposes, including papyrus, black pepper, mint, banana, and more. There was even a plant that made your hands smell like peanut butter when you rubbed it! (nut allergy-safe!)

They have a stick insect living in this greenhouse, which many of the kids got a chance to hold. Here’s Gareth holding “Georgia”:

We then headed outside to a scrubby meadow, past all the showy flowers, like these lady slipper orchids. BTW, the white stuff on the ground isn’t snow, it’s poplar fluff—yup, not a season goes by without white drifts on the ground in Alberta!

This was the kids’ favourite part of the class—the bug hunt! They had bug nets for all of us, some with shorter handles for kids, some with longer for adults, and off we went to collect bugs. Though no one in the class caught more than a handful, by sending the 20-plus of us out into the meadow, we caught a decent variety and number of bugs. And I did mention Gareth being excited, right?

We caught bugs for a half-hour or so, bringing our nets to Katie who put the bugs into catch-and-release jars for “show and tell” later. We then gathered around and got a mini-lesson on insects and spiders. Here’s Gareth and two other young volunteers demonstrating the characteristics of most insects: 3 body parts, 6 legs, 2 antennae, and 4 wings:

And here’s the characteristics of spiders: 2 body parts and 8 legs:

Katie then showed the class what we caught, and passed around the jars for a closer look. Here’s a Hunt’s bumblebee:

Gareth with caterpillar and then bluet damselfly:

Daegan checking out the entire collection a second time:

Gareth with the butterfly and moth cage, which contained several species. The one in the picture is the Canadian Tiger Swallowtail, one of the most striking large butterflies you’ll find in these parts:

And right at the end as folks were heading off, Gareth found a wolf spider on Katie’s backpack. We learned it was a male wolf spider, which you can tell by looking at its palps (short leg-like/antenae-like things near its face). Male spiders have “boxing gloves” (clubs) on their palps, female spiders have long, smooth palps (“manicured palps”, as Katie put it).

We had a great time at this class, and are headed back for another in the series, on Animals of Alberta in July, and then one on Frogs and Pond Life in August. I’ve got a few more pics of our birthday weekend in Edmonton to share…to be continued tomorrow.

The town of Maple Creek, SK, which we went through, had major flooding, as did the city of Medicine Hat, AB, which is still under a state of emergency.

Anyways, shortly after our return, the boys and I made another long-distance trip (350kms / just over 200 miles) to Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump, where we met up with another homeschooling family. Buffalo jumps were widely used by aboriginal peoples on the prairies / great plains / grasslands, and involved killing buffalo—which they depended on for food, shelter, clothing, and more—by driving them over cliffs.

Head-Smashed-In is a superb interpretive centre—another of Alberta’s sites designated a World Heritage Site by UNESCO—and built right into the side of the cliff once used as a buffalo jump. The centre (and cliff) is 6 stories high. Curious how this area got its name? Here’s the sign that greets you in the parking lot:

The left-hand text of which reads: “In the 1800s, according to legend, a young brave wanted to witness the plunge of buffalo as his people drove them to their deaths over the cliffs. Standing under the shelter of a ledge, he watched the great beasts fall past him. The hunt was unusually good that day. As the bodies mounted, he became trapped between the animals and cliff. When his people came to do butchering, they found him with his skull crushed by the weight of buffalo carcasses. Thus, they named the place “Head-Smashed-In.”

Archaeological evidence indicates that this site was used by Aboriginal people for at least 5700 years [in other words, a site older than the pyramids in Egypt], making it among the oldest, largest, and best preserved of the many buffalo jump sites on the western plains.

In 1981, Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump was designated a World Heritage Site by the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization [UNESCO].”

Upon entering the interpretive centre, you see this:

and are given instructions as to the suggested order in which to tour the site. They suggest you watch a film about how the buffalo jump was used—as I had read elsewhere that this film is disturbingly realistic, the boys opted to skip it—and then proceed to the top of the centre and work back down. This site and field trip in general was a challenge for my young vegetarians, but it helped them understanding other cultures, other choices, and led some great discussion about how animals were used then (hardly anything was wasted, and thanks was given to the buffalo for giving their lives so the people could live) vs. today (another factory-farmed Big Mac, please!), as well as the difference between choice and necessity.

The boys, with their palaeontological leanings, quite enjoyed the display with the buffalo skeleton, and the lift-the-flap quiz asking you to identify the bone fragments:

They also liked the infant and doll carriers, and learning what was used for diapers back then (moss stuffed into the baby carrier):

We then headed, as suggested, to the top of the centre, and outside along the cliff top where the buffalo were driven over (you can still see the cairns—rock piles—used as drive lanes). The view is incredible:

That’s the Oldman River valley in the distance, one of the few areas with trees in these grasslands, and where the Blackfoot would make their winter camps. In the very far distance, along the horizon, you can just make out some of the many wind turbines in this part of Alberta. Many folks know Alberta is blessed with oil and natural gas deposits, but we also have many wind farms in this SW corner of the province.

The cliffs. Note the school group on the pathway below to give you a sense of scale:

In contrast to the above photo, which looks NE, this is the view to the SW—the Rocky Mountains. Yeah, we’re kind of spoiled for stunning landscapes in this province.

We then headed back inside, where we bumped into a school group listening to a Blackfoot guide giving part of a tour. We tagged along, and learned some interesting tidbits, like that teepee poles were not transported from camp to camp; they were left for the next group. We also learned that First Nations peoples travelled far and wide, and traded with one another, as tools made from stone found in the Dakotas and Minnesota has been found on site here:

Before video games and television; these marked buffalo bones were used for games of chance and gambling.

The boys checking out some hands-on displays:

Then we came to their favourite display, which was mine too when I toured this site with some visiting relatives more than a decade ago:

It explains how various parts of the buffalo were used, including buffalo horns carved into drinking cups, or used to carry hot coals; small bone splinters used for awls for sewing; decorated buffalo skulls used in sundance ceremonies; sinew used for sewing and binding; bladder bags (number 13 in the pic) used to store fat in a tightly sealed containers, allowing this important food source to be preserved for long times (Aboriginal tupperware!); and buffalo chips (dried dung) burned as a fuel source—a vital element to surviving the cold winters on these northern grasslands where trees are few.

We also skipped the very end of the interpretive centre, where the destruction of the buffalo at the hands of the white man was accomplished in a few short years. Shocking, really, when the Blackfoot and other First Nations peoples killed them in huge numbers, but never to the point of (near) extinction.

After a quick lunch break, we met up with the other homeschooling family for a walk outside:

Here’s the cliffs as they appear from below:

You could see many cliff swallow nests, as well as poop stains:

Daegan found the archaeological information quite interesting. As close as it got to palaeontology for this site, I suppose. Note the teepees in the background:

Interpretive sign about the archaeological site, and how—among other things—dating can be done by examining the type and shape of arrowheads found:

Of course, other things caught the kids’ interests, like this caterpillar:

And here’s the boys looking for more bugs. Makes me wonder if Blackfoot brothers did the same thing in this very spot, hundreds of years ago.

Here’s some photos of our “inside adventures”. Here’s Daegan just outside the interpretive centre:

There are LOTS of hands-on items at the centre, and interactive displays, keeping kids happy:

The welcome sign to the Interpretive Centre, which also functions as a field station for the Royal Tyrrell Museum. Ongoing palaeontology digs and research happen at DPP, and the most recent displays at Tyrrell on ceratopsians (triceratops, styracosaurus and the like) feature new species from DPP found AFTER the birth of my kids! This is a very active field of science where we live, and I am hard-pressed to think of a better place for our boys to grow up, given their interests.

Daegan by one of a handful of large dino skeletons on display:

This bone, which rather reminds me of Rocky the Flying Squirrel, is in fact a vertebra from a quetzalcoatlus, the largest pterosaur species (flying reptile) known. It had a wingspan of 12 metres (almost 40 feet)!

Both Daegan and I found this next display, the “dino diversity wall”, quite interesting. It lists the species so far found in the park, grouped by order / family / genus / species. 42 different species by my count:

As I mentioned, there was far more to the centre than dinosaurs. After walking through a mock palaeontology camp:

you came to a large section that was about the park as it is today. There were many displays on wildlife, one on how hoodoos are formed, some on First Nations Peoples and their views on the badlands, etc. They had a box with the different kinds of sedimentary rocks found in the park for you to touch: sandstone, mudstone, bentonite clay (which is insanely slippery when wet!), etc. But the boys’ favourite display, by far, was the “Badlands Diversity Wall.” It had several 3-sided panels that could be flipped around to reveal information about various lifeforms found in the park (bugs, birds, plants, etc.), and when you let go, it flipped back to the panoramic scene. You can see one of these walls behind Jim and Daegan at this hands-on display (there were two such walls):

Here are the boys turning the panels around seeing / reading about what critter lurked behind:

The boys had me take gajillions of pics as they found some of their favourite animals, bugs and plants, but I’ll just share their two absolute favourites right now. Gareth with the northern scorpion, and Daegan with the prairie rattlesnake:

Gareth just wandered over and insisted I show you the 10-lined June beetle as well:

And here’s one last one of the boys and I goofing around, making T rex claws and roaring at each other. Just adding to the ambiance for the other visitors.

It was a wonderful mini-vacation!

The entrance to the park is quite dramatic. When driving, all of a sudden the prairie drops away, and it is badlands as far as the eye can see:

There is an area to pull off into, and several interpretative signs. Here’s an excited Gareth:

and Daegan at the sign with information about DPP being designated as UNESCO World Heritage site, putting it in the same category as Stonehenge or the Pyramids:

The close-up of the sign reads: Dinosaur Provincial Park, which was nominated by Canada on behalf of Alberta, was placed on the World Heritage List at the 1979 meeting of the UNESCO World Heritage Committee as a site of outstanding universal value forming part of the natural heritage of mankind. Dinosaur Park contains the largest and most comprehensive collection of Upper Cretaceous dinosaur fossils in the world and specimens are on display in major museums everywhere. It also contains excellent examples of badlands and an important riparian ecosystem supporting a wide variety of flora and fauna. [If you visit London’s Natural History Museum, New York’s American Museum of Natural History, and countless other museums around the world, you will find many fossils on display are from DPP].

The badlands were carved by the Red Deer River:

and they have signs explaining this process. Here’s Gareth taking a look at the “Birth of the Badlands” display:

It’s hard to give a sense of scale of these lands in pictures, but I thought this photo did a reasonable job. I have labelled some items you can see:

There are just so many interesting ways wind and water have eroded the lands. Here’s the view right beside the interpretive centre:

One of the biggest surprises, to me, was how much wildlife we saw, especially unusual birds like this lark sparrow:

After a long visit at the interpretive centre, we headed on a gravel driving loop that took us to two fossil houses, and 3 trail heads. What is a fossil house? It’s a windowed shelter built over fossils that were found on site and remain in the ground. There are signs and displays, a plasticized book to flip through for more info, and an audio clip by Dr. Phil Currie (Canada’s best-known living palaeontologist) that is played by pushing a button:

There were lots of places to walk around the badlands:

You did have to be careful where you stepped, though—there were cacti everywhere!

Some of the cacti were already in bloom, lending a shocking burst of colour to an otherwise muted landscape:

At the second fossil house, we decided to embark on a hike. This hike has several interpretive signs along the way, and ends at a 1913 fossil quarry. We only made it about halfway, though—in the blazing heat, all of us sweated our bug spray off and were being eaten alive! The badlands trap the heat, and it can be much hotter here than in towns nearby. A temperature of 47C (117F) has been recorded here in the shade!

Jim read the safety warnings about not sticking your hands under rocks or ledges, or into cracks and crevices one more time for the boys. I think the boys were disappointed, but I was quite happy we didn’t see any rattlesnakes, scorpions, or black widow spiders:

The signs were interesting, and covered the earliest fossil finders in this area (The Blackfoot First Nations peoples) to Joseph Tyrrell (after whom the Royal Tyrrell Museum in nearby Drumheller is named) to the “Great Canadian Fossil Rush” of the early 1900s. I’m calling this Daegan’s history curriculum.

We also saw several interesting rock formations, and our minds were running wild with fossils. I dubbed these “stegosaurus rocks”, as they look very much like the plates on a stegosaur’s back to my eye:

Just before heading for home, Jim saw some bones. Not fossils—they’re clearly recent—but it had all of us wondering what creature met its demise in these badlands:

Tomorrow: the interpretive centre at DPP. A lot more than just dinosaurs!      

and stopped at the Alberta Tourist Info Centre at Walsh, just inside the AB / SK border. We’d stopped there on the way out for a bathroom break, and Gareth wanted Jim to see the neat dino stuff they had inside:

I also found a Western Meadowlark getting its dinner on the front lawn:

The next day we did a few activities in “The Hat.” After getting Jim a much needed coffee, we headed to the world’s tallest teepee, but were disappointed to find it cordoned off as they were repainting. (That’s a truck with a huge crane in the pic). The teepee is 20 stories high:

We went for a short walk anyways, checking out groundhogs, bugs, cacti, and birds. I saw and heard the very colourful ring-necked pheasant, but he was too far to get a decent pic, even with the zoom lens. You can see a better pic of one here.

We then headed to the nature centre in Police Point Park. We chatted with the park naturalist, who showed the boys a black widow spider in a small terrarium (black widows, scorpions, and rattlesnakes are found in this SE corner of Alberta), and the boys checked out the current display all about beavers:

We then headed for a long nature walk, via the “Enchanted Forest” and pathway that looped along the river. We saw all kinds of birds, bugs, flowers and other wildlife. All of us found something to enjoy in this outing:

I found a Mountain Cottontail rabbit (also called Nuttall’s cottontail), as well as several birds. I’ve included pics of the Cedar Waxwing and Yellow Warbler, but other sightings included a Gray Catbird, House Wren, flycatcher (unknown species—flycatchers are even harder to sort out than gulls or sparrows!), Common Nighthawk, and Baltimore Oriole:

Jim and the boys found a pair of mating box elder bugs, which obviously made an impression on Daegan, given his later entry in his travel journal:

We then drove on to Brooks, about an hour down the highway, where we were staying as it is the closest town to Dinosaur Provincial Park (more on it tomorrow). I went solo for a short outing to Kinbrook Island Provincial Park, about 15 minutes south of town, as it is supposed to be one of the best birding locations in SE Alberta (and, no surprise, the rest of the family was ‘all birded out’ by this point). I was not disappointed. In my short time there, I saw the reclusive marsh wren, as well as countless other birds, including canvasback ducks and yellow-headed blackbirds:

Tomorrow: the amazing badlands of Dinosaur Provincial Park!

The Centre itself is fair-sized building built into the side of a hill above the Frenchman River valley. It is clean, bright, very well laid out and professional. There are detailed displays on a wide variety of prehistoric life forms—it is not just about ‘Scotty’, the T rex found in the Frenchman river valley nearby. (In fact, its not even primarily about Scotty). Many of the displays are hands-on and kid-friendly, and they have other activities for kids you can add on for low cost. Our boys did a fossil dig (cost: $3).

When you arrive at the Centre, you first head to the theatre to see a short film about the discovery of Scotty the T rex. You are then given a guided tour of the museum displays, with a very knowledgeable guide who, in our case, was happy to customize the tour to the boys interests and questions. Even I Jim and I learned new things (more on this in a bit). We will be back! Anyways, let’s get on to some pics, shall we?

The T Rex centre has two parts: the tourism side, which we enjoyed, and the science / palaeontology side of things. I noticed this on a dusty truck in the parking lot:

There were scientists working in the lab that we were able to watch, and they had some of the prepared fossils on display (like Scotty’s actual bones):

The town of Eastend is in a very scenic spot, among an ‘oasis of trees’ in the river valley, surrounded by rolling grassland / scrubland hills and badlands. The drive off the Trans-Canada (from Maple Creek) goes through the eastern edge of the Cypress Hills as well—not your flat ‘boring’ prairie in the SE corner of Saskatchewan! (The Cypress Hills are a heavily treed geological oddity rising above the prairie—in fact they are the highest point of land between the Rocky Mountains and Labrador on the east coast of Canada. They also have unique flora and fauna as they were not covered by glaciers in the last ice age).

Heading into the Centre, which is built into the side of the hill in an aesthetically pleasing manner:

Part of the guided tour:

There are lots of hands-on displays—very kid-friendly:

We brought a picnic lunch, and enjoyed the scenery (reflected in the pic on the mirrored glass). There are bathrooms, a water fountain, and a superb gift shop, but no cafeteria on site. (There are several places to get food in town, a 2 minutes drive down the hill.)

Daegan and Gareth spent some time after lunch scouting for fossils and catching bugs. You get more of a sense of the scenery in these pics. A really lovely spot:

After lunch the boys did a fossil dig activity (Gareth got a bit of help from Jim at the end). I can so see the future here! Daegan found a parasaurolophus skull (model), and Gareth a brachiosaurus:

Before heading on our way, we went back through the displays one more time—the boys and their uber-excitement had settled by then, so Jim and I were able to read and learn rather than dash from one thing to the next with the boys. One of the most interesting things I learned was about how little we know about T rex. Given how popular this dinosaur is, I thought we knew lots and had founds tons of T rex fossils—but not so. Just over 2 dozen T rex fossils have ever been found (world-wide), and the vast majority of these have only small fragments of the skeleton (less than 10% complete). Sue, now at Chicago’s Field Museum, is the best-known among these.  But we know nothing of T rex eggs or young, nor their growth rate or family habits.

Here’s a bunch more pics from the display area. The one of Gareth pointing to the coprolite (fossilized poop) and Daegan wrinkling his nose in the background makes me laugh. Hope this gives you a good idea of what to expect  if you make the trip to Eastend.

Checking out small town playgrounds and restaurants, hotel swimming pools, tourist information centres and washrooms. Lots and lots of bathroom breaks when travelling with young kids!

We saw lots of wildlife, like these pronghorn antelopes resting in a field near the highway in SE Saskatchewan:

We checked out the T Rex Discovery Centre in Eastend, SK, where we watched a movie, got a guided tour, checked out displays on all kinds of prehistoric life, excavated fossil replicas, had a scenic picnic lunch, and spent generously in their superb gift shop. Highly recommended!

Outside the T Rex centre, and in many other places, Daegan caught bugs for us to examine more closely:

On our way between dino stops, we visited Medicine Hat, Alberta, taking in the world’s tallest teepee, a nature centre (where we got to see a black widow spider!), and two nature walks in Police Point Park: one through “the enchanted forest”, and one along the South Saskatchewan River:

I went for a quick birding outing to Kinbrook Island Provincial Park, just S of Brooks, where we were staying overnight before out big day at Dinosaur Provincial Park.

We saw the stunning badlands of Dinosaur Provincial Park, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, so designated due to its abundance of fossils, it’s “aesthetic” badlands, and its rare, undisturbed riparian habitat. (The Red Deer River runs through the park). Literally thousands of dinosaur fossils have been found in the park, including more than 40 dinosaur species and more than 400 complete skeletons—and excavation continues today. This is the highest density of dinosaur finds in the world. It also has a superb interpretive station with a mix of dino info (including a replica of a palaeontologist’s camp) as well as displays about today’s wildlife found in the park (plants, birds, reptiles, bugs, etc.). We will be going back later this summer—it was absolutely incredible.

The boys also spent time making entries in their travel journals, drawing and writing about the highlights of the trip. Here’s one of Gareth’s entries (“a T Rex named Scotty found in Saskatchewan”):

and here’s one of Daegan’s, about a bug he caught in Medicine Hat:

Tomorrow, a more detailed look at the T rex Discovery Centre.

White-faced ibis, one of the rarest birds in Alberta:

Barn Swallow:

And what I think is my best shot, photographically-speaking. It’s a better pic than in my field guide! A Killdeer:

Have a great week!