Calgary Drumheller Dinosaur Fossils and Hoodoos Day Tour

The drive from Calgary across the prairie to the Badlands

The day starts with pickup in central Calgary and a drive of about an hour and a half north-east along Highway 9. The road crosses the open prairie of southern Alberta, a flat sea of wheat and canola fields, grain elevators and small farming towns, with the Rockies shrinking in the mirror behind you. Then, without warning, the land drops away into the Red Deer River valley and the Badlands appear: layered cliffs of grey, brown and rust-coloured rock carved by meltwater at the end of the last ice age.

A Drumheller day trip from Calgary is the easiest way to see this landscape, because the sights are spread along the valley and there is no public transport between them. Our guide fills the journey with the story of how the Badlands formed and how fossil hunters in the 1880s first found dinosaur bones here, so the stops make sense when you arrive.

Horseshoe Canyon viewpoint

The first stop is Horseshoe Canyon, about 17 kilometres west of Drumheller, where the prairie suddenly opens into a horseshoe-shaped amphitheatre of banded rock. The viewing platforms on the rim look down on layers of sandstone, shale and black coal seams laid down about 70 million years ago, when this was a warm river delta roamed by dinosaurs. A path leads down into the canyon for those who want to walk among the formations, though the visit is kept short so there is enough time at the museum.

Horseshoe Canyon is worth visiting for the contrast alone: one minute you are among wheat fields, the next you are looking at a desert valley that could be in another continent. The light is best in the morning, when the tour arrives, and the viewpoint has paths suitable for most walkers. Bring a hat, because there is no shade on the rim.

Royal Tyrrell Museum of Palaeontology

The Royal Tyrrell Museum is the centrepiece of the day and the reason most people take a Drumheller tour. Opened in 1985 in Midland Provincial Park just outside Drumheller, it is Canada's only museum dedicated entirely to palaeontology and holds one of the largest collections of dinosaur skeletons in the world. The galleries walk you through the history of life on earth, with a dinosaur hall of complete skeletons, the Burgess Shale creatures, a Cretaceous garden of living plants and windows into the preparation laboratory where technicians clean new fossils.

Admission is included in the tour, and you have about two hours to explore at your own pace, which is enough for the main galleries and the museum's outdoor fossil trail. Royal Tyrrell Museum opening hours are daily in summer and Tuesday to Sunday in winter, and the guide plans the visit to fit; lunch is at your own expense in the museum cafeteria or in Drumheller.

Drumheller town and the Red Deer River valley

Drumheller itself is a former coal-mining town that has reinvented itself as the Dinosaur Capital of the World, with dinosaur statues on street corners and a giant fibreglass dinosaur beside the visitor centre that you can climb for a view over the valley. The town sits on the Red Deer River, which carved the Badlands and still winds between cottonwood trees and cliffs through the whole valley. The guide points out the old mine sites and the coulees as you drive between the stops.

Many visitors ask how to get to Drumheller from Calgary; it is about 140 kilometres by road, and this tour removes the need to rent a car or find parking in the town. The best time to visit Drumheller is from May to September, when the museum has long hours and the trails are dry, though the Badlands are striking under a dusting of snow as well.

The Hoodoos Trail

The last stop is the Hoodoos Trail, about 16 kilometres east of Drumheller on the road towards East Coulee. Hoodoos are tall pillars of soft sandstone capped by a harder stone that protects the column beneath from rain, so they erode into mushroom shapes over thousands of years. The protected site has a short interpretive path, boardwalks and stairs that bring you to eye level with the pillars and up to a ridge with views across the valley. The formations are fragile, so visitors stay on the marked paths.

The hoodoos are the most photographed natural feature of the Badlands and the perfect close to a day that started with the canyon rim. In the late afternoon light the rock turns orange and the shadows make the shapes stand out. From here the vehicle returns to Calgary, arriving back at your pickup point roughly nine hours after departure.