Where monsters roamed and giants played

Sometimes you don’t have to travel far – in this case only to the neighbouring province – to be immersed in another world and time. A nine-day tour of Southern Alberta this past June with Mile Zero Tours, revealed the areas ancient past and its cultural  journey.

A short drive from the museum is the Atlas Coal Mine site. With its abandoned structures, weathered wooden buildings, and a graveyard of old trucks, it’s the perfect set for an old Western movie. The photos and story boards tell a compelling story of the miners’ lives. In the 1930s, up to a third of contract miners earnings went to fees and costs. They had to pay; to have the weight of the coal they mined checked, for explosives they used to make their work easier, and for living arrangements which included “chicken coops with eight other miners for $18 a month,” or the rent-free option of “a man cave you built from digging into the soft hillside.”

Two-hours drive southeast, and not far from Medicine Hat, is the Red Rock Coulee Natural Area. That’s as specific as I’ll get as I promised our guide Rick, I wouldn’t mention the exact location of one of his special places, (although on-line searches will.) Scattered across the landscape lay massive, rusty-red round boulders, some up to two and a half metres in diameter and dating back millions of years. “It’s as if giants abandoned a game of marbles,” said Rick.