Canada Guide
Alberta and the Rockies
Drumheller
A downbeat town in an extraordinary setting, DRUMHELLER is roughly ninety minutes' drive northeast of Calgary. As you approach it from the west, the town is hidden until you come to a virulent-red water tower and the road suddenly drops into a dark, hidden canyon. The otherworldliness of the gloomy, blasted landscape is heightened by its contrast to the vivid colours of the earlier wheat and grasslands. Drumheller sits at the base of the canyon, surrounded by the detritus and spoil heaps of its mining past, the Red Deer River having exposed not only dinosaur fossils but also (now exhausted) coal seams. These days Drumheller is sustained by agriculture, oil – there are some 3000 wells dotted around the surrounding farmland – and tourism, the Tyrrell Museum of Paleontology ranking as one of Alberta's biggest draws.
The Dinosaur Trail
The Dinosaur Trail is a catch-all circular road route of 51km from Drumheller embracing some of the viewpoints and lesser historic sights of the Alberta Badlands and the Red Deer Valley area. The comprehensive Drumheller Valley Visitor's Choice (free from the Drumheller infocentre) lists thirty separate stopoffs, mostly on the plain above the valley, of which the key ones are: the Little Church (6km west of Drumheller), the "Biggest Little Church in the World" (capacity six); Horsethief Canyon (17.6km west of the museum) and Horseshoe Canyon (19km southwest of the museum on Hwy 9), two spectacular viewpoints of the wildly eroded valley, the latter with good trails to and along the canyon floor; the Hoodoos, slender columns of wind-sculpted sandstone, topped with mushroom-like caps (17km southeast of Drumheller on Hwy 10); the still largely undeveloped Midland Provincial Park, site of the area's first mines and crisscrossed by badland trails, now home to an interpretive centre (daily 9am–6pm; free; 
403-823-1749); and the Atlas Coal Mine (guided tours May– June daily 9.30am–5.30pm, July– Aug daily 9.30am–8.30pm, Sept daily 10am–5pm; $6 for guided tour; 403/822-2220, 
www.atlascoalmine.ab.ca ), dominated by the teetering wooden "tipple", once used to sort ore and now a beautiful and rather wistful piece of industrial archeology.