Diggin' up bones: Edmonton AM takes virtual road trip to the Badlands

Much like a prehistoric pest trapped in amber, our summer plans remain in suspended animation.

The pandemic has placed summer as we know it on pause.

To break free, Edmonton AM is takingyou towhere the dinosaurs roamed, without ever leaving the safety of your home.

Every week, CBC Edmonton's morning show crew takes a virtual road tripto one ofAlberta's favourite destinations.

From the rumbling of the engine underfoot to the crackle of the campfire, these soundscapes come with all the atmosphere of the open road.

This week, Mark Connolly and Tara McCarthy hopped in a jeep (top down, of course) and skipped town, charting a course from Edmonton to Drumheller, the heart of the Alberta badlands.

Don't let your summer plans go extinct. Hop in.

For our first stop, we pull into Beaumont to meet up with a business that's always on the road, The Little Flower Truck Co.

Owner, Laura Crawley hauls some unusual summer cargo in her tiny turquoise truck.

The canvas-covered flatbed of her vintage Subaru Mini is full of freshly-cut flowers roses, gerbera daisies, peonies and sage all ready to be arranged into made-to-order bouquets for roadside customers.

After stopping to smell the roses, we take a pit stop at the summer village of Rochon Sands.

That's where Frank Hadfield, the founder of Dinosaur Valley Studios, a company that specializes in creating life-like full-size replicas of prehistoric creatures, is working on a whale of a project.

He's constructing a gigantic statue of a northern pike.

The fish is 25 feet long and will weigh about 1,000 pounds. The oversized catch, constructed of expansion foam and polyurethane will adorn the town's marina on the shores of Buffalo Lake.

We chug along the highwayto our next stop,Stettler, home of Alberta's steam train.

Bob Willis, general manager of Alberta Prairie Railway acts as our conductor as we park the car and hit the track from Stettler to Big Valley.

The train has left the station and we rumble into Big Valley just in time for a tour from Tanya Plante.

She's president of the local historical society and the owner of Boardwalk Bistro on the Jimmy Jock boardwalk, which brings shoppers back to days when this sleepy community was a wild frontier-town.

The boardwalk features current local businesses and otherslike the local undertaker and the house of ill-repute long sinceclosed.

The boardwalk gets its name from a former Chinese food restaurateur and rumoured bootlegger.

And our final stop, Drumheller, a place where dinosaurs, albeit ones of concrete, still roam almost every street corner.

In this town, the T-Rex isking and a large statue of the beast growls over downtown like Godzilla.

The area's rich deposits of dinosaur bones have fascinated Albertans for generations. And with moreunearthed every summer, there is always something new to discover at the Royal Tyrrell Museum.

Craig Scott, the paleontologist in charge of preservation and research, dusts off some bones and gives us the inside scoop on a new prehistoric exhibit yet to be unveiled.

Which Alberta destination should Edmonton AM explore next? Share your favourite weekend hot spots and roadside pit stops in the comment section below.

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