This was the first site that I visited on my Canada trip. I had arrived the day before in Calgary and got up early to make the 2.5-hour drive eastwards to see this park. Due to the 8-hour time difference with Europe, I was awake in the middle of the night anyway. The drive is easy (one stretch of highway for 90% of the ride) and my Garmin had no trouble finding the park entrance. It’s not signposted from the main highway so you have to know where to get off, but after that, there are signs all the way.

Right before the entrance lies a viewpoint that possibly is the best of the whole park. It lets you look down into the canyon. The different layers of sediments in the ‘hills’ stand out clearly. Great views!

I had pre-booked a tour for 9.30 called the ‘Centrosaurus Quarry Hike’. This 2-2.5 hour hike is supposed to get you into the reserved zone and among the dinosaur fossil beds. At the reception however, I was told that the tour could not run this day: overnight rain had made the trails too slippery. They were offering an alternate tour through the public zone.

Some 20 other visitors including a number of children showed up to take that tour with me. We were transported in a bus to the other end of the park and dropped there for some sedate walking. I wouldn’t call it a ‘hike’ as it required no energy at all. I also didn’t like the way the tour was conducted: a kind of American-style Q&A at the intellectual level of an 8-year-old child.

The best part came at the end: we were allowed into a small part of the reserved zone to look for dinosaur fossils. Just to look at them of course, not to dig them out. And this area literally is covered with them: tiny bone splinters, teeth and some more intact bone structures. Little excavation is done here nowadays, they have enough already and are looking for the more interesting stuff such as dinosaur eggs.