The Badlands. How hardcore does that sound? I’ve always wanted to visit the Grand Canyon (and my parents are going there next month… jealous!), but right here in Canada we’ve got a pretty surreal landscape ourselves. Southeastern Alberta is home to “The Badlands” — dry terrain made up up rock and soil that’s been heavily eroded (thank you to Wikipedia for being such a helpful tour guide once again). Possibly the coolest feature of this type of geography are the hoodoos, which are those tall pillars of rock formations you see to the right here.

In any case, there was no way I was going to live in Alberta and not see this! Sadly all my vacation was used up to go back to Ottawa and get married, so we couldn’t go away for more than a day. The result was a road trip to Drumheller in the spring of 2011! Enter: The Extreme Canadian Prairie Edition of Travel Tuesdays.

I let Rob drive so I could take some pictures along the way. Plains, cattle, grain, and pickups were on the horizon for much of the way, until we entered the Badlands.

How neat is this? Layer upon layer of soil. You can see history stacked upon itself. This area is a hotspot for dinosaur fossil discoveries, and it’s easy to see why. We got out of the car and walked around, though much like the sand dunes on the East Coast, there are a lot of areas restricted for preservation around Drumheller. It was a cool day, the the heat radiated off these rocks. While very impressive, this area is pretty small. If you have the time, I would recommend going further south where there is presumably much more area to roam! We made a quick stop into the dinosaur museum, where we got to see the Edmontosaurus. It was pretty amazing knowing that all those skeletons were made up of finds just kilometers from the museum! After the museum we grabbed some food and headed home sweet home to Edmonton. Sometimes for a great adventure you don’t have to wander far!