The Canadian Badlands is an uncrowded paradise for outdoor enthusiasts. Here, you can paddle down a badlands river, cycle along winding highways, camp under vast skies filled with glittering stars or watch hawks on the wing and pronghorns bounding across the open prairie.
It is also home to a vibrant culture. Your choices include attending Alberta’s only rural professional theatre, a Beethoven symphony in a spectacular badlands amphitheatre or a folk music festival. Arts and culture have a long history here, ranging from ancient Aboriginal camp sites and rock art to modern painters and potters, whose works are widely available in friendly galleries and shops.
To immerse yourself in the Canadian Badlands, spend some time outdoors in the fresh air under expansive prairie skies. There’s plenty of recreational ways to do so, from hiking and canoeing to camping and bird watching.
Camping opportunities abound in provincial and municipal parks and at private, full-service facilities. Sleep under the stars in a badlands setting in the Drumheller Valley, Dinosaur Provincial Park and Writing-on-Stone Provincial Park, or camp beside a lake or tree-lined irrigation reservoir.
These water bodies also offer many family recreation opportunities: fishing, swimming, boating or just relaxing on a beach. To explore deeply-cut prairie valleys, hop in a canoe or guided raft and float for a few hours or days down the Red Deer, Milk or South Saskatchewan Rivers. On a hot summer’s day, there’s nothing more refreshing than splashing in a water park or swooshing down a waterslide in places such as Drumheller.
To combine recreation with education, take a lovely interpretive walk through badlands or riverside cottonwood stands in the Drumheller Valley
and Dinosaur and Writing-on-Stone Provincial Parks. Longer hikes through forests and plains are available in the lofty Cypress Hills Interprovincial Park, which also boasts excellent star gazing in the world’s largest dark-sky preserve. In the city, extensive networks of walking and cycling trails wind through the protected river valleys of Red Deer, Lethbridge and Medicine Hat.
Kinbrook Island Provincial Park, near Brooks, is one of the best bird watching areas in southeast Alberta, with sizable populations of double-crested cormorants, American white pelicans and blue herons. Dusty prairie roads are a good place to get out of the car and listen for the melodious meadowlark or the clucking of ring-necked pheasants. Elsewhere, a good pair of binoculars is needed to scan the prairie skies for soaring hawks, falcons and bald and golden eagles. To see these raptors up close, or even perched on your arm, visit the Alberta Birds of Prey Centre in Coaldale.
If all this hasn’t exhausted your options, there’s still golfing, geocaching, road cycling…
