Day 14 – Calgary Alberta to Dinosaur Provincial Park near Brooks Alberta (207 km)

We woke up a little slower this morning, natural punishment for last night’s fun. After the requisite coffee to get things moving, Sherri even whipped up a delicious batch of cinnamon pancakes to make sure we started our next leg on a full stomach. (We got a kick out of how this coffee mug matched Lilo's pants).

Jon and Sherri had a relaxing day in mind – they planned to drift down the Bow River in an inflatable dingy. The Bow River flows right through the heart of Calgary, and apparently many Calgarians enjoy floating aimlessly along it’s slow moving and calm currents. Sounded like a blast, but alas we had a schedule to keep. Hey, remember the theme song from the Littlest Hobo (the Canadian version of Lassie, with a German Sheppard that drifted from town to town, solving crimes and shit?): “Maybe tomorrow, I’ll want to settle down. But until tomorrow, I’ll just keep movin’ on.”

After another quick visit to Safeway, we were on our way back down the Trans Canada Highway (TC-1) towards Brooks Alberta, and Dinosaur National Park. Most of the trip was fairly uneventful – the TC-1 is an efficient and fast moving highway, and through this part of the journey we still passed through a number of small towns and communities.

So far on this trip, the Microsoft Streets and Trips program has been invaluable. Beyond being a lot of fun to track where we are and where we’ve been, and to help learn the names and elevations of mountains as we pass, Streets saved our asses on a couple of occasions as we searched out cheap accommodations in the United States. (Except Billings, but we’re not talking about Billings anymore. Damn taxidermists,)

Today, our luck changed. Microsoft Streets and Trips failed us, big time. As we neared Dinosaur Provincial Park, we had seem some signs, but for the most part we were relying on Streets to lead us there. This was a big mistake. I started to get concerned when the road we were on, Alberta Road 876, turned to gravel. “That’s strange for a road leading to such a supposedly busy park,” I thought. But it was still a wide road, with some traffic, so we kept onward. We turned off onto Township Road 220 and returned to pavement, though the Road was fairly narrow and some what deteriorated. A little while later, we encountered some road work. Again, I wasn’t terribly concerned because I recalled the Parks website referring to some road resurfacing work going on near the entrance to the park, all summer long. If anything, this road work raised my confidence that we were headed in the right direction. Briefly.

When we approached the construction, we were held from moving forward by a flag person for a few minutes. Finally she waived us on, directing us to “Keep to the right.” 20 metes later the Road disappeared entirely, and we were driving through a full blown construction site (though keeping to the right as directed).

“Huh, there can’t be very many people at this park if everyone had to go through this.” I thought, as Vone and I chuckled and snapped pictures of our adventure. With the construction behind us, we continued on – close now to the destination indicated by Streets.
Some time later, Streets directed us to turn right onto Township Road 121 – a narrow, single lane, gravel path. With no signs indicating the entrance for the park, it finally occurred to me that it had been some time since I saw any signs for the park at all. Upon further investigation, we discovered that Streets was infact leading us to the geographical centre of the park, not the main gate of entrance. As you’ll see from the map segment below, THERE ISN’T EVEN A ROAD FOR THE FINAL 5km OF THE WILD GOOSE CHASE IT WAS SENDING US ON!!!

So there we were, a few kilometers north of the northern boundary of Dinosaur Provincial Park, when in fact the road entrance is on THE SOUTH SIDE. And this is not a small park: driving around it to get to the south side added up to 160 km. To add to the fun, we decided to continue clockwise around the park rather than return through the construction we just experienced. This choice took us down some of the more isolated "range roads" I have ever been on.

Surprisingly, while our spirits were diminished, Vone and I (and Lilo) kept our cool through the detour – except for some choice words for the fine folks at Microsoft (thankfully, Lilo doesn’t understand such words yet).

Finally arriving at the park shortly after 5:00, were amazed by it’s rugged beauty.

And what's very cool, is that the campground is right in the middle of the rugged beauty. We really are camping in the wild west tonight.

The late western sunsets even afforded us a chance to explore some of the badlands on a brief hike. Ok, so it was more of a drive down a tour-loop road while we stayed in the comfy air-conditioned confines of Canyonero. Hey, it was close to 40C, even at 5:00pm!

And we did get out of the truck briefly explore a few areas. We climbed to the top of that big rock I'm standing on, and then had to figure out how to get back down!

(Lilo is sound asleep in the air conditioned back seat, if you’re wondering why she isn’t in these photos).

Hopefully the bugs don’t get worse tonight (they’re oppressive, even in the daylight so far!), and hopefully it cools off so sleeping will be comfortable. Tomorrow, it’s on through the rest of Alberta, and the flat prairie land of Saskatchewan.