Dry Island Buffalo Jump

Speaking of cruising the Alberta countryside, there is one drive that my dad and I took a couple of summers ago that I enjoyed immensely. We drove about 100 kilometres southeast from Red Deer to Dry Island Buffalo Jump.

Dry Island is a small badlands area straddling the Red Deer River.

The small plateau in the centre of the badlands is Dry Island.

Buffalo jumps are natural cliff formations that First Nations hunters used to help them kill buffalo. The hunters up above would drive the animals over the cliff to the hunters waiting below.

The other neat-to-know fact about Dry Island is that it was the site of an important paleontological discovery: that of part of the Eotriceratops xerinsularis. (And if you memorize the spelling of the names of all the dinosaurs discovered in Alberta, you are a long ways to winning your next spelling bee.)