{"id":61557,"date":"2023-12-12T09:35:39","date_gmt":"2023-12-12T14:35:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/motorcyclemojo.com\/?p=61557"},"modified":"2024-01-03T14:01:38","modified_gmt":"2024-01-03T19:01:38","slug":"worlds-largest","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/motorcyclemojo.com\/2023\/12\/worlds-largest\/","title":{"rendered":"World\u2019s Largest"},"content":{"rendered":"<h4>Chasing dinosaurs (and roadside attractions) across the Prairies.<\/h4>\n<p>Perhaps my childhood obsession \u2014 filling the pages of a sketchbook with pastel portraits and the facts I\u2019d gleaned from the How and Why Wonderbook of Dinosaurs \u2014 was unusual. That, and posing my collection of plastic dinos for photos in the swampy meadow behind our house. But when a return trip from the west coast saw me traversing the prairies on a 2022 Suzuki V-Strom DL650XA, my latent love had me leaping at the chance to explore the many sites in central Canada that are devoted to the prehistoric.<\/p>\n<p>Rather unintuitively, however, this leg of the adventure began in the galactic future, where I met the crew of the U.S.S. Enterprise \u2014 or at least their cardboard cut-outs. Rolling into Vulcan, Alta. (pop. 1,769), I discovered a diminutive town with a playful soul. A replica of the iconic Star Trek starship hovered outside the visitor centre, and inside I was met by a friendly Trekkie and a centre full of just about anything Trek-related anyone might ever hope to own \u2014 including a photo of oneself sitting in the captain\u2019s chair on the bridge. Of course, I sat. A short walking tour past sci-fi murals on the main street led to a transporter (where, again, I posed), and a bronze bust of Mr. Spock. It was accompanied by a cast handprint from Leonard Nimoy, who had himself visited in 2010. This year will mark the 30th anniversary of VulCON, an annual convention featuring various celebrities from the franchise.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Famous Watering Hole<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-medium wp-image-61578\" src=\"https:\/\/motorcyclemojo.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/11\/58a-300x199.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"199\">Turning my front wheel toward Drumheller, it was time to turn my attention to the past. By degrees. En route, I followed Eleven Bridges Road to the ghost town of Wayne, where all that remained of a mining settlement were the Rosedeer Hotel and Last Chance Saloon. Both had a storied past and looked like they\u2019d just stepped out of a Western film. (In fact, several movies had been shot here, including Truman Capote\u2019s In Cold Blood and Jackie Chan\u2019s Shanghai Noon.)<\/p>\n<p>After sailing endlessly across the open prairie, it was a shock to drop over the lip of the Red Deer River Valley and gaze across its yawning expanse. Several hundred metres below, I stopped for the obligatory photo in downtown Drumheller with the \u201cWorld\u2019s Biggest Tyrannosaurus Rex\u201d (it was monstrous!). But I was headed for the Royal Tyrell Museum of Paleontology which housed the largest collection of fossils in Canada. There I stood face-to-jaws with Black Beauty, one of the world\u2019s most complete skeletons of Tyrannosaurus Rex, and was mesmerized by displays of Albertosaurus, Triceratops, and five other Guinness World Record-holding dino skeletons.<\/p>\n<p><strong>A Popular Loop<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright size-medium wp-image-61572\" src=\"https:\/\/motorcyclemojo.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/11\/27-225x300.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"225\" height=\"300\">As darkness fell, I rolled out my bivy on the edge of Horse Thief Canyon and watched the Red Deer River meandering through badlands that marched to the horizon. A snowy owl set down unobserved on a fence post right behind me, and a startling screech shot a tremor up my spine. By his second cry \u2014 and before I could grab my camera \u2014 he was off again on hushed wings.<\/p>\n<p>I wasn\u2019t sure if he had been curious about this unusual intruder, or simply interested in the complex of prairie dog holes all around me. It was a very&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Chasing dinosaurs (and roadside attractions) across the Prairies. Perhaps my childhood obsession \u2014 filling the pages of a sketchbook with pastel portraits and the facts I\u2019d gleaned from the How and Why Wonderbook of Dinosaurs \u2014 was unusual. That, and posing my collection of plastic dinos for photos in the swampy meadow behind our house. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":61814,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2548,228],"tags":[2551,2171,2343],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v21.0 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Chasing Dinosaurs Motorcycle Travelogue | Motorcycle Mojo<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"We have a great motorcycle travelogue that takes us across the Prairies in search of dinosaurs. 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