August 10th to 13th Patricia and the Badlands……

Yes it sounds like a ropey band name…….!!!

Harvest Host time again at (https://www.badlandsmercantile.com/ ) Badlands Mercantile……….fabulous stop……admittedly we picked it for its proximity to Dinosaur park……( as we were booked in to Tillebrook Provincial park on the 11th…but we could not get the 10th so Harvest host was the solution again )

The lady in the store, Darlene, is a delight ….she used to work for Alberta Parks and is a wealth of both local and historical information.

First stop, as per Darlene was the Patricia Hotel. It has been there they reckon since at least 1909……it was originally the stagecoach stop before it became the railroad hotel when they built the railroad.

Decor has to be seen to be believed…..tripadvisor describes it as prairie style……but I would argue….that its not really a style thing…it is the honest, salt of the earth personality of the place. There is a whole wall of hand painted motifs , everything form bucking horses to buffalo running…..a huge stuffed buffalo head and all the tables have branding marks….we asked the hostess what it meant…’Oh’ she said…’the cowboys all came in one night and had a branding party…….they all marked the tables with their cattle brands’…..now tell me that doesn’t sound like a party and a half…….

We are in Alberta …so we ordered steaks…one bison, and the bacon wrapped tenderloin…..Ten minutes later the hostess came out with two large steaks…raw….on plates….and pointed us in the direction of the grill…!!!!!

Cook your own steak, texas toast, baked potato soup and salad…$32…..

A walk around the town of Patricia doesn’t take long…!!!

The big event in town is the Patricia rodeo…labour day weekend in September…we might have to plan going back there for it…..small town…..terrific cast of characters……

Darlene’s next recommendation was Dinosaur Provincial Park…..and that we should stop at the lookout just before the entrance to the park.

Dinosaur Park….though the name may seem disneyesque and uninspiring……is a UNESCO heritage site…….it’s the place where they excavated the fossils for museums worldwide…….and wow…I mean wow…it is a landscape that really must be seen to be fully comprehended…..

Imagine the impact on your brain the first time you stood beside Niagara Falls…this is tenfold the impact…….

The badlands..are like inverted mountains….you drive across a flat landscape…..big wide horizon…big big sky….and then…..stop at the lookout by the entrance to the park (as Darlene told us to do….) and you have the whole panoramic vista of the park…mountains sunk below grade…….its breathtaking…

I know I keep saying wow…….but we have been experiencing a lot of wows…and we are not at the mountains yet….

The deer was completely nonplussed by our presence……she looked over at us and continued munching even though we stood and watched her for a while. She was so close and so unconcerned…..

We did a hike through the valley floor, but we still had to get back and move the trailer to our next stop at Tillebrook Provincial park (https://www.travelalberta.com/ca/listings/tillebrook-provincial-park-1907/) about 30 kms away……we could not get a spot at Dinosaur park…which turned out to be a good thing because its about 3 to 4 degrees hotter in the valley….so Tillebrook was another win..!!!

After setting up we whipped over to the Brooks aqueduct (again…Darlene) another amazing structure……it was built between 1912 and 1914 as part of an irrigation system to bring water to southeastern Alberta…..its an extraordinary piece of engineering, when it was completed it was the longest concrete structure in the world.

There is a section where it crosses the railway….but it was not high enough for trains to fit under it…so they built a massive siphon under the railway…..its really quite something……The modern version also has a siphon….pretty clever…..!!!

The more modern replacement irrigation system is right next to it…we followed it down to the siphon and found these little creatures….

Muskrats according to google lens…….funny little beasties….

Scott……of course……….had to look it up….apparently they taste……”muddy”..!!!!

Second day of Dinosaur park we drove up from Tillebrook, totally the campground to stop at for the Dino’s. It’s quiet, all the sites are pull through and beautifully designed. Also very handy for Brooks which has everything you might need.

Along the road we just had to stop at this derelict gas station/gift store…..complete with its own Albertosaurus ( T-Rex’s smaller Canadian cousin ). There was something compelling about the dinosaur running towards the mailboxes…….

We picked out a series of smaller hikes to run together for this second day so we could do the Coulee lookout………

the path of the fossil hunters……………

There are three fossil sites that have had structures built around them to preserve them.

and the cottonwood flats……and it was hot……and dry……

The scale of the landscape is hard to communicate in pictures……

The cottonwoods…honestly …I had never heard of them before…….strange and lovely trees. The bark is actually soft like cotton flannel, quite surprising. They only reproduce successfully if the conditions are right at exactly the right time……and they self prune….by cutting of circulation to peripheral limbs when the conditions are dry……the big one in the pictures they reckon is 200 years old…….I know the sequoias are going to be impressive…but these were a lovely little surprise…..

Tillebrook was rife with these little gopher like creatures that looked kind of like squirrels without the fluffy tails….we were calling them ground squirrels until we looked them up….and found out that they are, in fact……ground squirrels……!!!

Left our shoes out overnight and the little dudes ate our shoelaces……….!!!!

Next stop High River Brewing….Harvest host again….but the first one, for us, that is a brewery…!!!