Once we were settled in, I got a good look at how much Yvette's kids had grown. Gustav was walking about and discovering the world as only an 18 month old can. Hugo was a slightly bigger version of the joking rascal I had seen last. Brigitte it seemed had eaten some magical beans and had sprouted to what seemed to be twice last year's height, but was still the mild mannered playful kid as before. Something was nice about feeling like things hadn't changed much in a year. Except that Ken had transformed into a German au pair named Runa. He picked up the accent pretty quickly too. Actually, Ken was busy packing for their move to Bowen island, so stayed behind. Runa was really nice, and definitely not a transmogrified Ken.
The kids latched on to each other pretty quickly. They played "hiding in the woods" and "family" most of the time we were in the sites. Let me tell you, if your kids want to play "hiding in the woods", you encourage the hell out of the game and enjoy the short respite. You might even get to sit down. "Family" consisted of the expected, with each child taking up a roll in the family. Robin had been in a bossy mood those last couple of weeks, so most often she was the Mom, and Olivia was the Dad because, well, she just IS kind of bossy (in her sweet "Ollie the three year old is the only thing I will answer to" sort of way). Brigitte and Hugo were the children when they felt like playing along, and Gustav, he just got to be Gustav. Olivia and Hugo spent a lot of time playing in the little woods around our campground. I think she really liked it. At one point later in the week as we walked to the playground hand-in-hand, Ollie told me "I love Hugo. But I don't want to tell him." For some reason during their play, Hugo picked the name "Poopis" as a nickname for himself. So all the kids started calling him Poopis while they played. For example, Olivia exclaiming "That's enough chocolate sauce Poopis!" for reasons I'm still not sure of.
The campsite had a nice enclosed playground, but the real boon for the site in the kids mind was that just across the river, there was the much anticipated splash pad located beside the World's Largest Dinosaur (which, true or not, is what it was called). The splash pad was not to be under emphasized, as the whole time leading up to the trip the kids would describe it as "We're going to the splash pad at Drumheller", as though THAT'S what we drove 13 hours to solely do. As a matter of fact, that was a lot of what we did.
We got up the first morning to - surprise - go to the water park. It was a great area for a hot day, with a wading pool that had a fountain in the middle, as well as a spray park. We learned while we were there that there was going to be a big celebration at the park the next day for Canada Day, so we made the usual bargains and promises with the kids to come back the next day. That night, Yvette had a fantastic idea. Since we only see each other once a year, we would throw a birthday party for, well, everyone! We got some sponge cakes from the store, plus icing, decorations, and a little present for each kid. I got one from Yvette too. And mine was the best (that's right, it's a little Scotsman with bagpipes AND a kilt).
On Canada day they had a great celebration in the shadow of the World's Largest Dinosaur (the efficient science writer in me thinks I should call it WLD for now on). There were giant blow up slides and bouncy castle like things everywhere, which the kids did none of and just ran through the splash pad and then hid in the few shadows there were from the incredible heat. One of the few shady spots afforded by the park was under a much smaller dinosaur statue than the WLD, which I will just call Not the WLD. The kids spent the rest of the day chasing each other through the legs of Not the WLD, interspersed by adventures into the giant wading pool with the fountain. I'm not sure if they had gobs or oodles of fun. Plus we popped into the pool in their aquatic centre for a while, a nice way to get out of the heat. Nearing the end of the day, we promised the kids we could climb up to the top of the WLD and go inside it's mouth. So we took the 108 stairs up to the top and stood in the gaping maw of the Tyrannosaurus Rex and looked out over the splash park and still very high Red Deer River. From there you could really see how the massive berm next to out campsite averted the Calgary-like flooding. To convince the kids to go back down, I informed them that it would be like the WLD was pooping us out, getting resounding "ewwws" and "yays" depending on the child. After a long day under the shadow of the WLD, we headed back to the campsite. There were some nice fireworks, but the kids had long since gone to bed, if not to sleep (as in the case of "I'm awake and still want to be a goof-ball and bug my sister" Olivia).
The Tuesday following Canada Day was predicted to be a scorching 35C and sunny, so we thought that would be a good day to hit the Royal Tyrrell museum, the place that was pretty much the real reason to go to Drumheller. At least for the adults. Who like science and Dinosaurs. And didn't drive 13 hours just for a splash pad. *Ahem* Although the museum was not far from our campsite, we decided to take the scenic route. It started by taking the aptly named South Dinosaur Trail which ran along the south side of the Red Deer river north east of Drumheller. The landscape around there was amazing, and very hard to capture in a picture. We stopped at the Orkney lookout to get an amazing view. The rock faces of the cliff walls were visibly streaked with horizontal shades, and we described as best we could to the kids that the all of the lines in the rocks were made as they were formed, with the new rock forming on top, so that the farther you looked down, the older the rock was. We also told them that when the dinosaurs died, they were buried and some of them turned into fossils and could be found in the rock of the right age. I think some of that even sunk in, at least with Robin. We continued to the quaintly modern Bleriot Ferry which crossed the Red Deer River over to the North Dinosaur Trail and went south to stop at Horse Thief Canyon. The view was astonishing and we took a picture, but again you just can't capture the full effect. After that, we headed down the Dinosaur Trail to meet Yvette and the crew at the museum.
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