Category: Museums

Revelstoke, BC/Mount Revelstoke National Park

Lake Eva in Mount Revelstoke National Park

The grand concept for this trip was to make our way to the Canadian Rockies, visit (and hike!) the national parks there, and start making our way back. As Doug detailed in the two previous posts, we extended our westerly turn-around point to Penticton and added a music festival in Salmon Arm, both in BC. In addition to the five Rocky Mountain parks, we included the two national parks in the Selkirk range in our list, just a bit west of the Rocky Mountains in BC. The first of these is Mount Revelstoke National Park.

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Yellowknife, NT

Yellowknife is out there! On the north shore of the Great Slave Lake, it’s a 15-hour drive from Edmonton, AB and 5 hours from the nearest settlement with more than 2,000 people. Although geographically isolated, it’s by no means disconnected from the world. It’s a modern city of 20,000 of the most ethnically diverse, friendliest and interesting people we’ve met on our travels.

We’d made a campground reservation to stay a few days for the music festival, and we extended it a couple of times to do some more visiting and exploring of the city.

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Wood Buffalo National Park (NT/AB) and Fort Smith, NT

Pine Lake in Wood Buffalo National Park

Wood Buffalo National Park is the largest national park in Canada and the fifth largest national park in the world.* How large? It’s nearly 45,000 sq km (17,300 sq mi). How large is that? By comparison, Yellowstone, one of the larger national parks in the US, is approximately 9,000 sq km (3,500 sq mi), just 20% of the size of WBNP. Like Yellowstone, WBNP is significant on a world scale. It’s the home of the largest free-roaming wood bison herd in existence, the only nesting area for the remaining wild population of whooping cranes and the largest freshwater delta supporting four waterfowl migration routes across North America. Oh, and it’s home of the world’s largest beaver dam, 850 metres (2,700 feet) wide.

They had me at ‘Buffalo.’

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Calgary, AB

Calgary skyline

Calgary (rhymes with strawberry) is one of the fastest growing cities in Canada, with a current population of 1.3 million. It’s a diverse city with 60% of the population of European descent and 36% ‘visible minority’ (non-white, non-aboriginal), the remainder being indigenous/aboriginal/First Nation. A former Olympic city, one of the largest in western Canada and a hub for the region’s agriculture, mining and oil activities, this should be an interesting place to explore.

We knew we wanted to visit Studio Bell, site of the National Music Centre and the Canadian Music Hall of Fame. We also checked our festival list and assumed we’d be able to find some interesting event. Well, dontcha know, we would be in Calgary for their biggest event of the year – The Calgary Stampede – billed as ‘The Greatest Outdoor Show on Earth.’ The Stampede attracts 1.3 million visitors from outside the city each year.

With our recently boosted confidence in urban camping, we set a course to arrive just a couple of days before the start of the Stampede.

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Drumheller, AB, part 2: Trekcetera

At one point in my life (or maybe a couple of them, to be honest) I’ve been a moderately serious Star Trek fan. Sue ultimately joined me in this enthusiasm, and I’m not ashamed to admit that one winter we binge-watched the entire Star Trek: Next Generation series on Netflix, in order, two episodes per night, from start to finish.

Anyway, to the point of this post…

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Drumheller, AB, part 1: Badlands and Dinosaurs

Canadian Badlands near Drumheller, AB

Southeast Alberta is a flat to slightly rolling prairie dotted with large farms and ranches. About an hour east of Calgary we crossed the Red Deer River Valley, paused and wondered what happened to the prairie. Canadian Badlands? Really? Due to a unique mix of prehistoric sandstone formation, glaciers and floods that occurred millions of years ago, the Red Deer River carved a more-or-less diagonal slash through this part of Alberta creating deep colorful badlands approximately 2 km (1.2 mi) wide and 28 km (17 mi) long. Having spent time on our trip two years ago in the Dakotas, we found the spectacular geology of this area to be surprisingly familiar.

Ron, our jam buddy from Prince Albert, suggested we visit the Drumheller dinosaur museum. Larry, our jam buddy from Linden, and his wife Barb suggested we go to Drumheller to tour the Badlands. More than enough for us to set a course…

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Saskatoon, SK

The view from downtown Saskatoon

Our approach to trip preparation includes doing a bit of reading and talking to people about where we’re heading. Based on what we learn, we go to our trusty electronic map and add e-pushpins indicating friends and family, potential places of interest, and music festivals. When we left home, Saskatchewan was looking a bit thin with not quite 4 pushpins across the entire province – Prince Albert National Park, Doug’s guitar buddy TerryB, the Saskatchewan Jazz Festival in Saskatoon, and the name of an old drumming colleague (but no current contact info).

As we approached Saskatchewan, the sparsity of pushpins turned around in a fashion reminiscent of the classic (original series) Star Trek episode ‘The Trouble with Tribbles…’

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North Manitoba – The Pas, Snow Lake

Wekusko Lake near Snow Lake, MB

North? We’re getting somewhere! Winnipeg, in southeastern Manitoba, is north of the northernmost point we visited in North Ontario. The province considers anything north of the 53rd parallel North Manitoba, and describes it as ‘a vast untamed wilderness’ which sounds like our kinda place. So from Winnipeg, we headed north…

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Winnipeg, MB

Just about everyone we talked to about Winnipeg suggested we stop to visit the Canadian Human Rights Museum. That’s more than enough reason for us to make a stop. In order to get to the Prairie Wind Music Festival last week, though, we needed to drive on through Winnipeg (with a quick stop to pick up a part for our truck) and return to Winnipeg after visiting Riding Mountain National Park. Fortunately our return trip took us through Minnedosa.

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