Showing posts with label drumheller. Show all posts
Showing posts with label drumheller. Show all posts

Sunday, 4 September 2011

Drumheller and the Bad Lands...

The day before Christopher was due to fly back to the UK Chris took us out for the day to Drumheller, which is about an hour and half away and is the dinosaur capital of the world but I wanted to see the hoodoos!!  
So we got to Drumheller and walked up inside the huge dinosaur... this is Chris with the foot.... or claw... do dinosaurs have feet?
and Christopher... with foot. 
and we looked out of dino's mouth over the town... 
and yes, I made Christopher have his photo taken in dino's mouth... 
Then we pootled down the road to hunt for hoodoos and found this suspension bridge that the miners used to get to the coal mine... 
Christopher and Chris on the suspension bridge

and those are my feet... to show how awful it was to walk across it!!  I don't mind bridges if I can't see thru' them!!
Then we found the hoodoos!!  Oh my, they are fabulous...  Where do hoodoos get their name? The name hoodoo comes from the word voodoo and was given to these formations by the Europeans.  In the Blackfoot and Cree traditions the hoodoos are believed to be petrified giants who come alive at night to hurl rocks at intruders.
hoodoo (also called a tent rockfairy chimney, and earth pyramid) is a tall, thin spire of rock that protrudes from the bottom of an arid drainage basin or badland. Hoodoos consist of relatively soft rock topped by harder, less easily eroded stone that protects each column from the elements. They typically form within sedimentary rock and volcanic rock formations.  Hoodoo shapes are affected by the erosional patterns of alternating hard and softer rock layers. Minerals deposited within different rock types cause hoodoos to have different colours throughout their height.  
More hoodoos.... 
This one at the front is beginning to crack.... I guess at some point this sleeping giant will fall over...
and Christopher decided to go climbing... 
and more climbing... 
I can see why they call these the badlands... farmers wouldn't be very impressed with all that rock!!  
Christopher with a batch of hoodoo to be.... it was a fabulous day out and we finished it off with a trip to the Dinosaur Museum back in Drumheller before heading home again.