This spot was a must on our list as we wanted to stop in Alberta and go to a dinosaur museum. The Philip J. Currie Dinosaur museum is home to a unique dinosaur find, the Pachyrhinosaurus lakustai. A river near the campground where we stayed called the “Bonebed” was home to a river of death for a herd of these creatures over 73 million years ago. We first heard about it from Gone with the Wynns and had to check it out!
Where we stayed
We stayed at the Pipestone Creek Campground. They offer some sites with 30 amp, we opted for no service site and luckily, our water pump is now in good working order! There is no service in this campground due to the valley that it is situated in. We did however get some occasional service with our 30-foot antenna. There have lovely grounds, a fantastic playground (which kids played in until 11pm at night since it was light out until then), close to the river and right next to the Pipestone Creek Bonebed for a great hike and sightings. Included in the cost of the site is free firewood which we enjoyed!
What we did
We went to the Philip J. Currie museum. It is a small museum, so it only took us a few hours to walk through and enjoy. They had some great exhibits of the Pachyrinosaurus and some areas for kids to dig for some bones.
Our unexpected highlight was to hike to the Pipestone Creek Bonebed to hopefully see some of the areas where they excavated the bones and get a good walk in. The museum offers a walking tour for $5 per person from the campground. We had turned it down due to timing and wanting to take Kenya with us. We went ourselves the second day we were there and found the Bonebed with an excavation site crew of volunteers there digging up some dinosaur remains. Not only did we get some excellent information from the crew, they even let us touch a recovered dinosaur bone and get right up close. It was quite an amazing experience!
Other Events
The town of Wembley is only 12km away and we were able to receive packages at the Post Office in town.