Camping in Dinosaur Provincial Park
Jul. 13th, 2009 10:11 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
totchipandaThis past weekend, I went down to Dinosaur Provincial Park with ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
raspberry_belle, losemymouth, dobbin477 and Denton for a fun weekend of tents, hiking, badlands and dinosaurs!
Joe (raspberry_belle) came over around 9 on Friday morning. We went to Safeway to do all the grocery shopping for the weekend (except for hot dogs) first, then picked up a card game at the Mall right around 10, and then hit up Canadian Tire for a water container and an air mattress. We hit the road and got on our way at 10:24am.
First we drove to Viking (1 hr east of the city, but it took us half an hour to get far enough to even see that sign lol) where we stopped at noon and had lunch. The waitress was rather rude to us but seemingly very pleasant to people we assumed were locals. We figured she could probably tell that we were city girls, and here we were in a small town having lunch. Screw you lady, we railed once back on the road. We may be city girls, but we were raised in small towns. Not to mention, I've spent ten years in retail.
Back on the road, Highway 36 is rather... straight. Like, to the point that Joe got really excited when a bend showed up in the road. We followed the roadway on the map, getting really pleased when it was time to turn a page! OOOOOH. We discussed why things were named what they were (why is an orange called an orange? If the colour orange was called something else, would the fruit still be called an orange?) and wound up renaming apples to "Flagstaffs" as we happened to be passing into Flagstaff County when I was hypothesizing this. It was a very uneventful drive, of which I will post minutes of later (funny convo happened on the way lol). Heading south, though, there are NO signs for Dinosaur Provincial Park. We decided to pass the turn off to a town near by and go 15km further south to fill up with gas, just in case.
Heading north on that same highway, LOTS OF SIGNS. WTF. Anyway, got onto the road leading into the park, and there was a sign pleading with motorists to keep an eye out and avoid hitting any snakes to conserve the population. We saw what we thought was one snake, but it was still there on Sunday, so perhaps it was a smushed one... Up to this point, it didn't look like we were in badlands at all, the area was just typical flat prairie. OH but it hid a wonder! Shortly after seeing the maybe-snake, there was a glimpse of the badlands! YAY!
Get down into the campsite area at like, 4:30, and promptly lose cell phone service. LOL, not so fun when our third car is a couple hours behind us and now we have no way to tell them that the campground is, in fact, nowhere near Drumheller. Someone has checked into our site already, and we drive around to find that Denton has arrived! And not much sooner than we did, because he was only half-unpacked. We proceed to set up camp in full sunshine, as our site gets shade in the morning, and in the evening after 7-ish when it drops behind the trees across the lane. Then we go to find out if there is a phone to be used, and pick up a cord of firewood and some ice for the coolers. Afterwards, Joe goes to drive up to the top of the hill to call the other car and tell them where to go, and Denton chases after her because there was a boxed lamp on the back window of her car. I sit down with my book (see previous entry) and wait. In the meantime, there is a very bold seagull looking for tastys, and an almost-as-bold family of sparrows flitting through for the same reason.
A car pulls into the site behind me. I stare at it for a few seconds, because Joe's car is the same colour, but it's definitely NOT Joe's care. Hooray, the rest of the party has arrived! Yay! Joe returns moments later, and we proceed to wait for Denton to return before starting a fire and cooking up hot dogs for dinner.
Denton has a grand time splitting the wood to manageable pieces, and gets a fire going. 'Dogs are roasted on sticks. One of them eventually falls into the fire, where we push it under the flames and it's never seen again. After hot dogs, it's time for s'mores! One marshmallow gets sacraficed to the fire too. Finally full of almost-food and sugar, we play card games until about 11:30 and then head to bed.
I didn't sleep well the first night, as I rarely do in a new place/situation. For some reason, both nights my bladder decided that it wanted to be emptied within 20 minutes of lights-out, which I was NOT about to do in a dark campsite with outhouses >.> (Though to be fair, they were among the best outhouses I've ever been in.) Luckily, it was not insistent and I didn't have to get up until morning. As usual, it seems, for me, I'm tired early in the evening, and awake at the ass-crack of dawn. I got up at 7:30 to discover that Denton had been up for an hour already, and exploring. Laina (losemymouth) and Joe got up not too much later. However, I went back to bed soon after as I had a migraine and wanted to get rid of it or I'd be useless for hiking >:C Breakfast was made, the bacon was delicious, I couldn't stomach the eggs, and after we ate and cleaned up a little, off we went to see what kind of hiking trails were available in the area.
I think the visitor's centre is also the Tyrell field museum? I was there once in 1991, but I don't remember it was. The sign on the front said "Field Museum" but we never went inside except to ask about trails. So we went back to the campsite (climbing some of the hills on the way lol) to pick up water bottles, snacks, and pile into Denton's car to drive to the first trail.
We did the first trail, the other went on a unofficial trail up what seemed like a mountain while I rested at the bottom (friggin' hate migraines... my legs were shaky), a second unofficial trail (there was a cave! It required exploring), and a short hike from an area with a dinosaur skeleton covered over but left in the rock. We discovered the second trail head a short distance away, but decided to have lunch first. So we went back and had lunch (burgers, chips and some veggies) and Joe and I rested a bit while the others went to see about the guided tour at the visitor's centre before heading back to tackle the second trail.
That was an interesting one... the trail seemed to run out a short distance in, and we were left to explore a series of "river" bottoms and drainage areas, as well as more hills which were fun to climb. We couldn't tell if the trail kept on anywhere, so we just headed back and decided to get ready for the guided tour. But walking around these areas, it was so easy to get inspired for novel-related things, and I have lots of ideas for future stories :)
That was a really fun trip, and well worth the $8 it cost to take it. Our guide, Kate, was really quite fun. We learnt a fair bit about the area, such as the trees and why they were unique, how to identify bone fossils, how the badlands are formed, and a bunch of other stuff. The tour culminated in a mostly-complete Corythsaurus display (the tail is on display at the Royal Tyrell), a large section of a fossilized tree, a pincushion cactus, a piece of bone sticking out of the ground, and a large bull snake on the roadway as we drove back lol.
That was it for the day. The bus let us off at the campground, where we chanced upon someone from another campsite with the cutest Akita puppy, who let us pet her. So cute! Got back to the site and started dinner. I daresay the potatoes us girls made were rather amazing, despite throwing one package into the fire, and the chicken Denton fried up was tasty too ;) (and I also really enjoyed the salad). After supper, everyone but me went off to check out a program at the campground's outdoor amphitheatre, but quickly returned as they were doing the hokey pokey upon arrival ^^;;
When the sun went down, we played another round of the card game. I got up to poke the fire a bit, but noticed right away a thread of spider silk running from the pokey stick to the edge of my vacated chair. Sure enough, there was a spider near the stick, industriously working. Arnold (dobbin477) bravely saved me from the spider by brushing it away lol. During our game, the weirdest beetle I've ever seen landed on the table, twice. I'll have to try to find it online to find out what it was. I guess around 11:30 we went to bed again? Slept perfectly fine this time :)
The next morning, got up at 8. Breakfast was a pastry/granola bar and fruit affair, pretty quiet. We struck down most of the site and packed the cars before driving out to the final trail, which was a flat walk tour of the cottonwood poplar forest near the river. It only took us half the time the trail head's sign said it would, so we got the rest of the stuff and headed out around 10:45 to start the trip home.
Once in Drumheller, we stopped for lunch first, and then wound up repacking the cars as Laina and I live on the same end of town, where Joe and Arnold were going to the same area, so it made no sense to criss-cross our paths like that. We said our farewells, and headed out our separate ways. (Denton lives in Medicine Hat, for those curious. So sweet of him to drive up to Drumheller just to have lunch with us :) )
Laina dropped me off around 5:15, and it was soooooo good to be able to take a shower and get my fingernails clean. (Oh, the little things you miss...) It was so nice to be able to spend the weekend with friends, not caring about what you look like (we didn't go into the running-water-and-mirrored bathrooms at the concession stand until the final day, and I wore pajamas hiking on Saturday because they were the lightest clothes I brought ^^; ) or whathaveyou, and being out of contact with technology. It was really quite relaxing, despite the heat. I had a really great time, and I look forward to doing it again :)
raspberry_belle, losemymouth, dobbin477 and Denton for a fun weekend of tents, hiking, badlands and dinosaurs!Joe (
raspberry_belle) came over around 9 on Friday morning. We went to Safeway to do all the grocery shopping for the weekend (except for hot dogs) first, then picked up a card game at the Mall right around 10, and then hit up Canadian Tire for a water container and an air mattress. We hit the road and got on our way at 10:24am.First we drove to Viking (1 hr east of the city, but it took us half an hour to get far enough to even see that sign lol) where we stopped at noon and had lunch. The waitress was rather rude to us but seemingly very pleasant to people we assumed were locals. We figured she could probably tell that we were city girls, and here we were in a small town having lunch. Screw you lady, we railed once back on the road. We may be city girls, but we were raised in small towns. Not to mention, I've spent ten years in retail.
Back on the road, Highway 36 is rather... straight. Like, to the point that Joe got really excited when a bend showed up in the road. We followed the roadway on the map, getting really pleased when it was time to turn a page! OOOOOH. We discussed why things were named what they were (why is an orange called an orange? If the colour orange was called something else, would the fruit still be called an orange?) and wound up renaming apples to "Flagstaffs" as we happened to be passing into Flagstaff County when I was hypothesizing this. It was a very uneventful drive, of which I will post minutes of later (funny convo happened on the way lol). Heading south, though, there are NO signs for Dinosaur Provincial Park. We decided to pass the turn off to a town near by and go 15km further south to fill up with gas, just in case.
Heading north on that same highway, LOTS OF SIGNS. WTF. Anyway, got onto the road leading into the park, and there was a sign pleading with motorists to keep an eye out and avoid hitting any snakes to conserve the population. We saw what we thought was one snake, but it was still there on Sunday, so perhaps it was a smushed one... Up to this point, it didn't look like we were in badlands at all, the area was just typical flat prairie. OH but it hid a wonder! Shortly after seeing the maybe-snake, there was a glimpse of the badlands! YAY!
Get down into the campsite area at like, 4:30, and promptly lose cell phone service. LOL, not so fun when our third car is a couple hours behind us and now we have no way to tell them that the campground is, in fact, nowhere near Drumheller. Someone has checked into our site already, and we drive around to find that Denton has arrived! And not much sooner than we did, because he was only half-unpacked. We proceed to set up camp in full sunshine, as our site gets shade in the morning, and in the evening after 7-ish when it drops behind the trees across the lane. Then we go to find out if there is a phone to be used, and pick up a cord of firewood and some ice for the coolers. Afterwards, Joe goes to drive up to the top of the hill to call the other car and tell them where to go, and Denton chases after her because there was a boxed lamp on the back window of her car. I sit down with my book (see previous entry) and wait. In the meantime, there is a very bold seagull looking for tastys, and an almost-as-bold family of sparrows flitting through for the same reason.
A car pulls into the site behind me. I stare at it for a few seconds, because Joe's car is the same colour, but it's definitely NOT Joe's care. Hooray, the rest of the party has arrived! Yay! Joe returns moments later, and we proceed to wait for Denton to return before starting a fire and cooking up hot dogs for dinner.
Denton has a grand time splitting the wood to manageable pieces, and gets a fire going. 'Dogs are roasted on sticks. One of them eventually falls into the fire, where we push it under the flames and it's never seen again. After hot dogs, it's time for s'mores! One marshmallow gets sacraficed to the fire too. Finally full of almost-food and sugar, we play card games until about 11:30 and then head to bed.
I didn't sleep well the first night, as I rarely do in a new place/situation. For some reason, both nights my bladder decided that it wanted to be emptied within 20 minutes of lights-out, which I was NOT about to do in a dark campsite with outhouses >.> (Though to be fair, they were among the best outhouses I've ever been in.) Luckily, it was not insistent and I didn't have to get up until morning. As usual, it seems, for me, I'm tired early in the evening, and awake at the ass-crack of dawn. I got up at 7:30 to discover that Denton had been up for an hour already, and exploring. Laina (
losemymouth) and Joe got up not too much later. However, I went back to bed soon after as I had a migraine and wanted to get rid of it or I'd be useless for hiking >:C Breakfast was made, the bacon was delicious, I couldn't stomach the eggs, and after we ate and cleaned up a little, off we went to see what kind of hiking trails were available in the area.I think the visitor's centre is also the Tyrell field museum? I was there once in 1991, but I don't remember it was. The sign on the front said "Field Museum" but we never went inside except to ask about trails. So we went back to the campsite (climbing some of the hills on the way lol) to pick up water bottles, snacks, and pile into Denton's car to drive to the first trail.
We did the first trail, the other went on a unofficial trail up what seemed like a mountain while I rested at the bottom (friggin' hate migraines... my legs were shaky), a second unofficial trail (there was a cave! It required exploring), and a short hike from an area with a dinosaur skeleton covered over but left in the rock. We discovered the second trail head a short distance away, but decided to have lunch first. So we went back and had lunch (burgers, chips and some veggies) and Joe and I rested a bit while the others went to see about the guided tour at the visitor's centre before heading back to tackle the second trail.
That was an interesting one... the trail seemed to run out a short distance in, and we were left to explore a series of "river" bottoms and drainage areas, as well as more hills which were fun to climb. We couldn't tell if the trail kept on anywhere, so we just headed back and decided to get ready for the guided tour. But walking around these areas, it was so easy to get inspired for novel-related things, and I have lots of ideas for future stories :)
That was a really fun trip, and well worth the $8 it cost to take it. Our guide, Kate, was really quite fun. We learnt a fair bit about the area, such as the trees and why they were unique, how to identify bone fossils, how the badlands are formed, and a bunch of other stuff. The tour culminated in a mostly-complete Corythsaurus display (the tail is on display at the Royal Tyrell), a large section of a fossilized tree, a pincushion cactus, a piece of bone sticking out of the ground, and a large bull snake on the roadway as we drove back lol.
That was it for the day. The bus let us off at the campground, where we chanced upon someone from another campsite with the cutest Akita puppy, who let us pet her. So cute! Got back to the site and started dinner. I daresay the potatoes us girls made were rather amazing, despite throwing one package into the fire, and the chicken Denton fried up was tasty too ;) (and I also really enjoyed the salad). After supper, everyone but me went off to check out a program at the campground's outdoor amphitheatre, but quickly returned as they were doing the hokey pokey upon arrival ^^;;
When the sun went down, we played another round of the card game. I got up to poke the fire a bit, but noticed right away a thread of spider silk running from the pokey stick to the edge of my vacated chair. Sure enough, there was a spider near the stick, industriously working. Arnold (
dobbin477) bravely saved me from the spider by brushing it away lol. During our game, the weirdest beetle I've ever seen landed on the table, twice. I'll have to try to find it online to find out what it was. I guess around 11:30 we went to bed again? Slept perfectly fine this time :)The next morning, got up at 8. Breakfast was a pastry/granola bar and fruit affair, pretty quiet. We struck down most of the site and packed the cars before driving out to the final trail, which was a flat walk tour of the cottonwood poplar forest near the river. It only took us half the time the trail head's sign said it would, so we got the rest of the stuff and headed out around 10:45 to start the trip home.
Once in Drumheller, we stopped for lunch first, and then wound up repacking the cars as Laina and I live on the same end of town, where Joe and Arnold were going to the same area, so it made no sense to criss-cross our paths like that. We said our farewells, and headed out our separate ways. (Denton lives in Medicine Hat, for those curious. So sweet of him to drive up to Drumheller just to have lunch with us :) )
Laina dropped me off around 5:15, and it was soooooo good to be able to take a shower and get my fingernails clean. (Oh, the little things you miss...) It was so nice to be able to spend the weekend with friends, not caring about what you look like (we didn't go into the running-water-and-mirrored bathrooms at the concession stand until the final day, and I wore pajamas hiking on Saturday because they were the lightest clothes I brought ^^; ) or whathaveyou, and being out of contact with technology. It was really quite relaxing, despite the heat. I had a really great time, and I look forward to doing it again :)
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Date: 2009-07-14 05:00 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-07-14 05:26 am (UTC)