Alberta isn’t just about majestic Rocky Mountains and endless prairies. Just an hour and a half’s drive east of Calgary lies a place that looks like it doesn’t quite belong on this planet. From the main road, the earth suddenly opens up before you and you plunge into a deep canyon filled with bizarre sandstone towers, striped cliffs, and parched clay. Drumheller Canada is the dinosaur capital of the country and the heart of the Canadian badlands.
Welcome to the Canadian badlands — a place where dinosaurs once roamed and where you’ll now find one of the ten most important palaeontology museums in the world. Drumheller is an absolute must if you’re spending time in Calgary or planning a road trip through Alberta, and you really shouldn’t skip it. Especially if you’re travelling with kids, or if there’s still a part of you that loves Jurassic Park. 😁
So what’s in store? We’ll walk you through the Royal Tyrrell Museum — from dinosaur skeletons to real scientists working behind glass — hike out to the hoodoos, stop by a pub at the end of the world, and I’ll tell you where to grab the best Alberta beef burger. Let’s get into it.
TL;DR
If you’re packing your bags right now and just need a quick overview, here are the key points for your visit:
- Location: Drumheller is in the province of Alberta, roughly an hour and a half’s drive northeast of Calgary.
- Main attraction: Royal Tyrrell Museum of Palaeontology is one of the ten largest and best dinosaur museums in the world. Allow at least four hours for your visit.
- Landscape: The entire area sits in what’s known as the badlands — an arid, erosion-carved landscape full of canyons and rock formations called hoodoos.
- Time needed: From Calgary, it’s easily doable as a full-day trip. But if you also want to see the more distant Dinosaur Provincial Park (a UNESCO World Heritage Site), you’ll need two days.
- Best time to go: The weather is best from May to September, but be prepared for the museum being extremely crowded in summer.
- Getting around: You absolutely need a rental car — public transport in this part of Canada is very limited.
What is Drumheller and when to visit
Before we dive into the specific sights, let’s set the scene. Drumheller is a small, slightly quirky town in southeastern Alberta with a permanent population of roughly 8,000 people. It was named after pioneer Sam Drumheller, who bought land here in the early twentieth century and launched a coal mining operation. Nobody cares much about coal anymore — these days the whole town lives and breathes tourism and dinosaurs, quite literally. They’re on the streets, on signs, outside every other shop — genuinely everywhere. 😅
Climate-wise, we’re talking desert and semi-desert conditions, which means summers are hot and dry. If you visit in July or August, expect the sun in the badlands to be absolutely relentless, with temperatures regularly climbing to around 30°C. This is also peak tourist season, when the Royal Tyrrell Museum is packed to the rafters. The ideal time to visit is late spring (May–June) or early autumn (September), when the canyon colours are stunning, the crowds thin out, and the weather is pleasant for hiking. In winter, the museum is still open and you’ll practically have it to yourself, but the outdoor viewpoints and hoodoos are often buried under snow and ice, which rather takes away from the parched-landscape experience.
How to get to Drumheller
As I mentioned, getting around Canada without a car is pretty tough at the best of times, and for Drumheller that goes double. From central Calgary it’s roughly 135 kilometres and the drive takes a good hour and a half. The easiest route is to head north out of Calgary and pick up Highway 9 East, which takes you right to the edge of the famous canyon.
The drive is dead straightforward and, honestly, for the first hour you won’t see anything but endless fields and cattle ranches. Which makes the moment the highway suddenly drops into the Red Deer River valley all the more jaw-dropping — you’re suddenly in a completely different world. If you’re flying into Calgary from the UK, you’ll want to hire a car at the airport. We’ve been using DiscoverCars.com for years — it compares all the major hire companies in one place, making it easy to find the best deal. Airlines like Air Transat, WestJet, and British Airways operate routes from London to Calgary, so it’s worth checking flight comparison sites well in advance.
Where to stay and how much it costs
Most visitors treat Drumheller as a day trip from Calgary, which makes perfect logistical sense — Calgary has a much wider selection of nice accommodation and better restaurants. But if you want to experience the real atmosphere of the badlands without the tourist crowds, catching an early morning or a sunset, it’s worth staying at least one night.
The town has a very specific, slightly retro vibe. Don’t expect any super-luxurious resorts — think classic North American motels and smaller hotels. Prices for accommodation in Drumheller typically run around €70–110 per night for two people, though rates can jump higher during peak summer season.
If you do decide to overnight in town, among the nicer and well-reviewed options is the SureStay Plus Hotel by Best Western, which includes a solid breakfast and an indoor pool — a welcome treat after a full day of walking in the heat. Another pleasant choice is the Heartwood Inn, a cosy family-run guesthouse with a more personal touch than the big chains.
Your trip budget will mainly consist of fuel, a possible car hire, and entry fees. Alberta certainly isn’t a cheap destination, but the museum and parks are absolutely worth every penny. To compare prices and book in advance, we always start with Booking.com.
Drumheller: 10 best things to see and do
Right, let’s get to the good stuff. I’ve picked ten spots that beautifully combine prehistory, Alberta’s more recent industrial history, and truly unique natural wonders. I’d recommend plotting them logically along your route so you’re not doubling back unnecessarily.
1. Royal Tyrrell Museum of Palaeontology: the main reason to visit
This is the absolute centrepiece of the entire valley and probably the main reason you’ve come to Drumheller in the first place. The Royal Tyrrell Museum isn’t just some provincial bone display — it’s a massive research centre and one of the finest museums of its kind on the planet. Most visitors arrive planning to spend two hours and end up staying half the day. ☺️
You’ll find over 40 complete dinosaur skeletons here, and we’re talking genuine fossils, not plastic replicas. The entire exhibition is laid out chronologically, so you walk through millions of years of Earth’s history — from the earliest microorganisms right through to the Ice Age. The section called Dinosaur Hall is absolutely breathtaking, with a towering Tyrannosaurus rex skeleton and massive herbivores looming above you.
Admission is around 25 CAD (roughly €17) for an adult, and in summer they’re open daily from nine in the morning until nine at night. I highly recommend arriving right when it opens so you get at least the main halls to yourself before the school groups and tour buses descend.
2. Drumheller Hoodoos: iconic sandstone pillars
Head about fifteen minutes southeast of the town centre along Highway 10 and you’ll reach one of Alberta’s most iconic natural formations. Hoodoos are peculiar stone towers — or mushroom-shaped pillars — formed over millions of years as softer sandstone eroded away, leaving a cap of harder rock perched on top like a hat. They look genuinely otherworldly, as if someone deliberately arranged them across the landscape.
I do need to add one small, honest caveat though. Photos in tourist brochures often make it look like a vast rock city similar to Bryce Canyon in the USA. In reality, it’s a fairly compact fenced-off area with a few dozen of these formations. It’s definitely a gorgeous spot for photos, especially in the late-afternoon sun, but your visit will take twenty minutes at most. Entry is a token 5 CAD (about €3.50) and you park right by the road.
3. Atlas Coal Mine: a journey into industrial history
About 30 kilometres from the town centre you’ll find a site that offers a brilliant contrast to all the prehistoric history. The Atlas Coal Mine is a huge open-air industrial museum capturing the era when coal was king in this valley and life was incredibly tough. Alberta as we know it today essentially grew up on mining, and this is a fascinating window into that past.
The highlight of the entire site is the preserved wooden tipple — the last of its kind in the whole country. You can wander the grounds on your own, but I’d absolutely recommend paying extra for a guided tour. The guides often dress in period costume and tell jaw-dropping stories about how miners lived, the working conditions they endured, and how frequently cave-ins occurred. It’s a slightly chilling but incredibly compelling experience.
4. Horseshoe Canyon viewpoint
This will likely be your very first stop, as the canyon sits right along Highway 9 just fifteen minutes before you reach Drumheller itself. As the name suggests, the valley forms a huge horseshoe shape and offers the best panoramic view of the entire badlands.
From the canyon rim, you can clearly see the individual geological layers striped in ochre, brown, and reddish hues. You can simply admire it all from the viewing platform, or take the stairs down into the canyon and walk along the bottom. If you go for the second option, make sure you bring plenty of water. Heat gets trapped between the rocks down there and the air is completely still, so you’ll work up quite a sweat.
5. World’s Largest Dinosaur: gloriously cheesy downtown landmark
I can’t write about Drumheller without mentioning this beauty. Right in the town centre stands a 25-metre-tall fibreglass Tyrannosaurus rex statue that locals proudly claim is the world’s largest dinosaur. It’s huge, it’s colourful, and it’s gloriously cheesy — but you absolutely have to get a photo with it. 😁
For a small fee of around four to five Canadian dollars, you can climb the stairs inside the statue all the way up into the dinosaur’s open jaw, which gives you a view over the whole town and the river valley. It’s not exactly a profound cultural experience, but it’s precisely the kind of fun tourist attraction you’ll look back on with a grin when flipping through your holiday photos.
6. Last Chance Saloon in the village of Wayne
If you want a taste of the dusty old Wild West, take the turn-off to the hamlet of Wayne. Getting there is an adventure in itself — over just six kilometres of road, you have to cross eleven wooden bridges over a winding river. It was once a bustling mining town full of workers; today, only a handful of people live there permanently.
The main draw is the historic Last Chance Saloon. It looks exactly how you’d picture a pub at the end of the world. The walls are plastered with old photographs, taxidermy animals hang from the rafters, and there are supposedly bullet holes still visible from old bar brawls. It’s a fantastic spot for lunch — the ribs and burgers are excellent — and you’ll soak up a wonderfully authentic local atmosphere.
7. Dinosaur Provincial Park (UNESCO): a big detour that’s absolutely worth it
This one can easily cause confusion, so heads up: Dinosaur Provincial Park is not in Drumheller. It’s about an hour and a half to two hours’ drive southeast, near the town of Brooks. But I have to mention it here because if you’re into dinosaurs, it’s an absolute must.
While Drumheller has the museum, Dinosaur Provincial Park is the actual dig site — a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Many of the skeletons displayed in the Royal Tyrrell Museum were unearthed right here. The landscape is even more vast and wild than around Drumheller itself. The crucial tip is that you can’t access the best parts of the park on your own — you need to book a guided tour well in advance, where a real palaeontologist walks you through the terrain and shows you bones sticking directly out of the rock face.
8. Dam and riverside relaxation
After a full day exploring sun-scorched rocks, you might fancy a bit of downtime by the water. Although the badlands area is very dry, the Red Deer River winds through the valley and you’ll find several recreation areas and reservoir spots along its banks. Locals often roll up at weekends with camper vans, unfold their camping chairs, and spend the day fishing.
You can hire a kayak or canoe and see the badlands from a completely different perspective — right from the water. It’s wonderfully relaxing, and you’ll often spot deer on the riverbanks or birds of prey circling on thermal currents above the canyon.
9. Hand Hills and Rattlesnake Lake
If you love places that most tourists never reach, consider a small detour to the Hand Hills area and Rattlesnake Lake. This is that vast Canadian emptiness in the very best sense of the word. You’ll find gorgeous open prairie views and fantastic birdwatching opportunities.
The lake itself isn’t one of those crystal-clear glacial pools you might know from Banff National Park, but it has an enormous, slightly melancholic charm of its own. Just be warned — as the name Rattlesnake suggests, watch where you step in summer. Rattlesnakes are genuinely common in this area and love to bask on rocks in the heat.
10. Rosedale Suspension Bridge
My final tip is one for the thrill-seekers. About ten minutes’ drive from the museum, a long wooden suspension bridge for pedestrians spans the Red Deer River. It was originally built by miners in the 1920s to get across the river to the coal mine on the other side.
The bridge has been restored and is perfectly safe these days, but when you’re walking across and a gust of wind picks up, it gives you a proper wobble. Once you reach the far side, you’ll find remnants of old mines and several hiking trails that wind up into the hills above the river.
Drumheller with kids: little palaeontologists in paradise
If you’re travelling with school-age children, trust me — Drumheller is probably the best place in all of Alberta to take them. For any little dinosaur fan, this is pure paradise.
The Royal Tyrrell Museum is brilliantly set up for kids. The whole exhibition is visually stunning, with clever use of lighting and sound effects, so it’s far from just staring into glass cases. Children can watch real scientists through glass walls as they painstakingly clean bones from rock with delicate tools. At the hoodoos, kids love running between the weird rock formations and exploring the terrain. Just make sure they drink plenty of water and wear a hat — the sun in the badlands is fierce and shade is hard to come by.
Ideal day trip plan from Calgary
If you’re going for a single-day trip, here’s exactly how I’d structure it for the smoothest flow:
Get an early start and leave Calgary by 7:30 at the latest. You’ll reach the Horseshoe Canyon viewpoint around 8:45, where the morning light is gorgeous for photos and the tourist coaches haven’t arrived yet. By nine o’clock, park up at the Royal Tyrrell Museum. Give yourself a good four hours there — you won’t regret it.
After noon, once your brain is thoroughly saturated with dinosaurs, head into the town centre. Snap a photo with the big T-rex and grab some lunch. Then spend the afternoon driving southeast: stop for a walk across the Rosedale suspension bridge, drive through the eleven bridges to the Last Chance Saloon, check out the hoodoos, and round off the day at the Atlas Coal Mine. On the drive back to Calgary, you’ll be treated to a beautiful sunset over the flat prairie.
Where to eat in Drumheller
Speaking of lunch, I have to mention an Alberta classic. Alberta is world-renowned for its beef (Alberta Beef), and locals are incredibly proud of it. If you fancy trying it, everyone in town will point you to Bernie & The Boys Bistro right in Drumheller, which is widely considered one of the best burger joints in the area.
It’s a casual, unassuming little place that doesn’t look like much from the outside, but the reviews speak for themselves. They serve enormous burgers made with locally sourced meat, and if you love milkshakes, they do about eighty different varieties. Vegetarians will find meat-free options and salads too. It’s often packed, but the wait is absolutely worth it.
Practical information, prices, and rules
Let’s quickly run through a few numbers and practical details that might come in handy. One Canadian dollar (CAD) is currently around €0.67, or roughly £0.58.
- Royal Tyrrell Museum admission: Adults pay around 25 CAD (≈ €17), children aged 7–17 around 15 CAD (≈ €10). Children under 6 get in free. The car park is spacious and free of charge.
- Hoodoos entry: A maintenance fee of 5 CAD (≈ €3.50) per vehicle is charged at the site.
- Important drone rule: If you travel with a drone, be extremely careful in Canada. Flying drones is strictly prohibited in both provincial and national parks (this includes Dinosaur Provincial Park and Midland Provincial Park where the museum is located), and the fines are astronomical.
Tips and tricks for travelling to Canada
Before I wrap up, here are a few tried-and-tested travel tips that have been saving us time and money for years — not just in Alberta but everywhere.
Finding flights
For affordable flights to Calgary, search on Kiwi.com or Skyscanner — both are great comparison tools where you can set various filters and find the best combinations of flights from London, Manchester, or other UK airports.
We always keep an eye out for deals well in advance, because flights to Canada can skyrocket during the summer months. It’s worth checking connections with one sensible layover — you can save a significant amount that way and put it towards more experiences on the ground.
Hiring a car
Without a car, you’re pretty lost in Canada. We’ve been using DiscoverCars.com for years — it pulls together all the major hire companies and often offers better insurance deals than you’d get at the counter.
Don’t leave your car booking to the last minute, especially in summer when the most affordable models sell out fast. You’ll need a valid driving licence (your UK licence is accepted in Alberta) and a credit card in the driver’s name to pick up the vehicle.
Booking accommodation
Booking.com is our go-to, mainly because of the detailed guest reviews. Before we book any accommodation, we pore over the comments with the thoroughness of a forensic examiner. 😄
In Alberta, it’s worth knowing that nice places in smaller towns like Drumheller get snapped up quickly. If you already know your travel dates, book everything a good six months ahead with free cancellation — that way you’ve got flexibility without the stress.
Don’t forget travel insurance
Canada has excellent healthcare, but it’s eye-wateringly expensive. Any medical issue without insurance could cost you your life savings. For shorter trips we often go with a comprehensive policy from a UK provider, and for longer stays or digital nomad lifestyles, we can’t recommend SafetyWing highly enough.
From personal experience, don’t rely solely on the travel insurance that comes with your bank account or credit card — it’s often nowhere near enough for North American medical bills. Spend a little extra on a policy with proper coverage limits, so you can enjoy the canyons and cliffs with total peace of mind.
Where to go next in Canada
Once you’ve finished exploring prehistory in the badlands, Alberta and western Canada have loads more to offer. Below are links to our other articles on places well worth visiting.
If you’re craving city life and great coffee, check out our guide to Edmonton in Canada, the provincial capital with an incredible shopping centre and lovely parks. If you’re more of a nature person, don’t miss the stunning Waterton Lakes National Park, which sits on the southern border with the US and is far quieter than touristy Banff.
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