Airplanes and Dinos

Grain elevators along the way to Calgary

On our way to Calgary, we stopped in Nanton for a visit to their Bomber Museum. It being Father’s Day weekend, we were stopping at places that Russ has a particular interest in; airplanes and anything military.  

Russ next to a Lancaster, a Canadian bomber used during WWII

The rain hasn’t stopped for a few days and we got to set up camp in Calgary in the midst of a drenching. Have to say, this is not my favorite part of camping. But our trailer is very warm and snug, so once we got dried off, we were quite comfy. And I actually like being inside the trailer hearing all the rain coming down outside. Much better than being outside.

Calgary is a large, sprawling city. It has a nice pedestrian section downtown, but the weather was so inclement, we didn’t really explore it.

Beautiful flowers were displayed all over the downtown area.

On Father’s Day, we visited the Canada Military Museum which had displays from all of their branches; Air Force, Navy, Army and some special regiments. Lots of airplanes, guns and tanks. The day was finished off with dinner at a very nice Alberta steakhouse.

Took a day and went out to the Royal Terrell museum which is a world class dinosaur museum. Alberta is a hotbed of dinosaur finds from the Crustaceous period (this is the last period of dinosaurs, before they were all killed off) and this museum is the center for the dino research. I really enjoyed the write-ups for the displays and read nearly every one of them. This is unusual for me since I usually lack the patience, but these were so well written, like reading a story about the animal. The research lab area had a window in the museum so you could watch the researchers doing their work on current finds. I have never seen dino fossils presented in such an interesting fashion– some were setup in scenes showing how the various critters might have interacted (that is, usually attacking one another.) They had one gallery that was setup like an art gallery with the fossils framed.

The world's largest T-Rex model - over 80 feet tall!

This is a fossil of a shelled creature.  The mineral is ammolite, which is used for jewelry

This is an Albertosaurus, an ancester of a T-Rex and much bigger.

A raptor, of Jurassic Park fame

Our litttle stowaway carefully checking out his roots (he found out that birds derived from dinos)

Our visit to Calgary was finished off with a visit to Canada’s largest quilt shop, of course.

Next stop is Edmonton.