November 2009

On Friday night I went out with Wim, my employer, and his family to Montana’s restaurant. It was a real nice restaurant that reminded me of a restaurant that I went to in Sydney just before Angus's 21st. I had ribs and Buffalo wings... I fully understand why those poor sods couldn't fly. After dinner we headed home. On Saturday morning I began my day with a half hour trip into Red Dear to see the Van de Brakes show their Holstein cows in a competition. Then I headed to the Innisfail Discovery Wildlife Park to have a look at the bears which starred in such movies as Dr Dolittle etc. Unfortunately they had closed a day or so earlier for the winter so I stopped to have a look through my brochures to see what else I could do. In the end I decided to take the 2 or 3 hour trip and head over to the Badlands and have a look at the Royal Tyrrell Museum of Paleontology. The trip over was a little boring as the roads are very straight over here and most of the terrain is gold stalks from the harvested grain etc. Eventually, as I got closer to Drumheller, I realized why they called this area the Badlands.

The land is pretty flat and then suddenly drops off with cliffs etc to the small Red Deer River. As you can see from the picture the terrain is pretty cool. I eventually got to Drumheller about an hour or so ahead of the projected GPS time of arrival. I must get it updated as I think it has issues. I bought some A&W for lunch which is a fast food restaurant like Maccas and burger king. Then I headed the last 12klms to the Royal Tyrrell Museum. What a treat I was in for!!!

I got and paid an entrance fee of $10. I headed through the entrance not knowing whether to be excited or if it was going to be boring and this was what greeted me...

They had skeletons of all sorts of dinosaurs. They had a room surrounded by glass in which you could see a massive lump of rock which entombed a gorgosaurus and they were chipping the rock away and exposing the entire skeleton. I got to see a picture of Darwin’s skeleton and his relatives. I must say they looked rather odd. No wonder he came up with weird ideas. As I moved my way through the museum I found more dinosaur skeletons and finally the big one… The Tyrannosaurus Rex. It was awesome to finally see the sheer size of the creature! I have a few pictures of the other dinosaur skeletons which were on show in the picture gallery. After completing the tour I jumped in my car, tanked up and headed back to Lacombe to go to a church pot luck dinner. I arrived an hour late but still got to see everyone and get some dinner and desert. After dinner we tossed the ball around and just as we were about to leave I managed to catch the ball with my pinky and ended up bending it out and up. I popped it straight back into to place but as it was still bending upwards it decided to go to the hospital. When I got there I asked for a long wait… well maybe I didn’t ask but that’s what I got. I was advised that the finger was fractured and that the tendon and ligaments were so badly damaged they had organized an appointment with a plastic surgeon at 9am on Sunday. I made the appointment and found out that there was nothing the plastic surgeon could do. I now have it strapped for the next 6 weeks and hope for the best.