Badlands, Royal Tyrrell and an epic steak dinner

Gorgeous view over Horse Thief Canyon

Today was our last full day out West. Poor Rosie was still pretty tired from a long week of camping, so we opted for a later start. 

After a late and surprisingly hearty breakfast at the hotel, we packed up the car, and headed up to Horse Thief Canyon, which is just a bit beyond the Royal Tyrrell Museum.

Zoom in and guess who is on top!

When we got to the edge of the canyon, we were greeted with magnificent vistas over the badlands....and a ton of prairie dog burrows.

Zoe immediately fixated on the adorable prairie dogs, and settled right down to make friends and see how close they would get. Her patience was rewarded when she got booped by one particularly friendly fellow.

Brad and Rosie spotted a hilltop (butte?) within the canyon and immediately took off down the slope so they could climb it. I waited a couple of minutes with Zoe, then followed suit.  Distances in the badlands are highly deceptive, and in no time, I found myself scrambling up the side of a steep hill, and standing on top of a spectacular viewpoint, staring across at Brad and Rosie, who had mountain-goated their way over to another separate, but equally spectacular viewpoint.

Mountain Bean evolves into Badlands Bean

We paparazzi'd each other, and then Rosie scampered over to come see me. Then Brad did his Brad thing by disappearing off the back of the slope for a while (with the car keys and all the water, I might add....). 

Prairie dogs are so adorable

I climbed back up to see how Zoe was doing.

She continued communing with the prairie dogs, so I joined her, and my patience was also rewarded with a cautious visit from a curious and friendly little guy. So cute.

This guy wandered over to check me out

Soon enough, Brad made his way back from his adventure, and we all piled into the car to head to the Royal Tyrrell Museum.

The girls reluctantly acquiescing to mom's annoying request to pose by the sign 

I have to admit, the museum was Brad's request and definitely not really my thing. I'm ambivalent to museums at the best of times, but this one was especially crowded, and, it seemed, stuffed with thousands of malcontent toddlers. Not gonna lie, I'd rather be hiking in the badlands than stuffed into museum. But given that we made the kids hike over 70km the last two weeks, I figured we owed them a few more classic kid activities, rather than haul them up/down the side of another mountain.

Brad and the kids absolutely loved it. They were rapt learning about the history of the area and all the different fossil findings. Zoe loved seeing the sea creatures, and there was much discussion over which dinosaur was, in fact, the best dinosaur (it's stegosaurus. Don't @ me). They loved walking through the history of the dinosaurs and I think we all especially enjoyed seeing the full-scale skeletons of dinosaurs.

There is no doubt that the Stegosaurus is the superior dinosaur

Obviously I took a photo of the fossilized poo

We spent about 2.5 hours of the museum, and finished off by having a quick lunch and heading off to Calgary.

No visit to Drumheller would be complete without checking out the world's largest dinosaur. So of course we did that and Brad staged an appropriately cheesy photo shoot for the occasion.

Getting chased by the world's largest dinosaur 

After a relatively uneventful drive, we checked into our hotel and the kids made a beeline for the pool. I don't know if it's an Alberta thing or what but our hotels for the last three days have all had spectacular waterslides for the kids. This one leveled that up a bit and had a separate small pool/slide for young kids, and a larger pool with two different slides for older kids...and adults.

My kids will never want to stay in a normal hotel again. Best Western Port O Call in Calgary NE.

The kids slid their hearts out for about 90 minutes, and then it was time to head out for one last vacation dinner. Since we'd been in Alberta for a week and hadn't yet hit up a steakhouse, we decided it was time.  A quick google search led me to a local mini-restaurant chain (3 locations) called the Cattle Baron, as a not-too-fancy but super delicious option.

Enjoying a fantastic California Cab Sauv in the adorable custom etched glasses at The Cattle Baron

We went to the Calgary NE (Airport) location and we honestly had the best night. The food was delicious, cooked exactly to order (Zoe has never been more thrilled to devour a rare steak) and the service was amazing. The meal was capped off when our server, Farouk, brought the girls' desserts out with sparklers, which completely made their nights (as evidenced by the huge grins).

The sparklers brought out all the smiles

We couldn't have asked for a better celebration to end our trip. We've felt so fortunate to be able to immerse ourselves in parts of this country's immense and incredible geography - to look across incredible views, to see varied terrain - from rainforest to mountain to desert - and to meet some great people along the way.

Tomorrow we fly back to Ottawa, and while we're sad for the adventure to come to an end, I'm super excited to be sleeping in my own bed, and to not have to pack up gear every morning.