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Drumheller's Royal Tyrrell Museum "Who bravely dares must sometimes
risk a fall." Another unsolicited early morning wake-up call roused us. An electrical transformer on a telephone pole near our tent exploded reminiscent of a 6 am cannon blast. We levitated. Soon, a dozen workmen with heavy equipment crowded around the site. Backup warning Sonalerts beeped, backhoe buckets clanged, and dump truck boxes slammed. Men in hard hats, orange coveralls and reflective vests bellowed unintelligible instructions into the din. I peered out. "It's true," I moaned. "Canada has only two seasons: winter and construction." Camped in the midst of a major destruction zone, any further attempt at sleep proved futile. We admitted defeat and got dressed in a daze; the humour of repeated early morning wake-ups somehow escaping us. A trifle less amiable than a grizzly awakening from hibernation, I scowled at the offending workers as they ripped the earth apart mere metres from our tent. "Can't get much worse than this," I roared to no one in particular. Suddenly, slate grey clouds with engorged bellies slit open; water gushed forth like so many slaughtered swine intestines. To our amusement the backhoe mired down in its just-created slippery muck hole. Talk about digging one's own grave. Only the very tops of its tires showed above the mud. With no abatement in sight from either rain or noisy workmen, we folded our soggy tents. Other camp inhabitants - snug (and smug) within motorhomes' dry confines (whose sizes rivalled our house) - pointed and sniggered. "Wretched weather brings out the best in folks," I grouched. Deciding the best course of action would be to spend the day inside, we headed for the Royal Tyrrell Museum of Paleontology - a world-class dinosaur and archeological artifacts museum. Once there, we met other cyclists traipsing around in rain gear. I guess we all had the same good idea. Warm, dry, and comfortable, we spent the entire day enjoying the spectacle of enormous dinosaur bones wired together like immense 3D jigsaw puzzles. Hours later, still not having seen everything, we exited. The outside world was no drier. Rain continued to hose down; roadside ditches brimmed with rushing water. Foregoing another night at the construction zone campsite, we braved the elements for five kilometres to another campground. At Dinosaur Park RV Resort, the woman in the check-in office tried to console us. "This is the poopiest day we've had in a long time," she understated. We laughed at her remark, but her assessment didn't make us feel a whole lot drier. For a hefty fee we acquired a site downwind from the biffies. "Oh, joy," Sue said, noting our less than bucolic location. "Look at the bright side," I ventured. "You can drink all you want without worrying about not making it to the washroom." "With all this rain," Sue said, "I doubt I'll ever be thirsty again."
The only good thing about the campground was a group of Tour du Canada cross-country cyclists (Tour du Canada is a non-profit corporation that offers the longest annual bike ride in the world - from Vancouver to Saint John's). Tom, one of its 40 group members, told us they had 64 days to cycle across Canada. His bravery encouraged us. Not because he was cycling across Canada in slightly over two months, but rather, four days earlier, Tom had crashed and burned - knocked from his bicycle by a wayward travel trailer awning. When the trailer had passed him, its dangling sunshade had mowed him off at the ankles. A souvenir row of jagged red stitches marched up the length of his left calf. "You should get lots of sympathy riding like that," I said. "Well, the attending cop was less than sympathetic," Tom related. "Huh?" I asked. "What do you mean?" "The cop said to me: 'You guys shouldn't be on the road anyway.'" "No kidding!" I exclaimed, shaking my head in disbelief. Tom smiled. "The Tour du Canada tour operators lodged a formal complaint at the cop shop." I shook my head again, amazed that even the authorities seemed unaware of cyclists' road rights. |
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