ROAD TRIP: A BBM Game

[jpwagoneer1964]

Urie, Wy

[nakymaton]

Exshaw, Alberta

- a small town down the valley from Canmore. Hey, the Alberta trip people could stay there!



And Ennis, thank you for that extra info about Ten Sleep! 

[Meryl]

Wink, Texas 



Roy Orbison Museum, Wink, Texas


I'd stay in Exshaw, Mel!

Ennis, thanks for the info.  You shoulda played the game, though!  Next time, add a city. 

[jpwagoneer1964]

Keller, Tx

[Fran]

Rosenberg, Texas

[EDelMar]

I forgot a town name for the game.  OK how bout the next one... 2 hrs east of here,

Gillette WY

[jpwagoneer1964]

Eden, Wy

[Fran]

Nederland, TX

Nederland was founded in 1897 by Dutch settlers.  The more prominent families were named Rienstra and Doornbos, and their descendents still live in the area today.  Allegedly, they were attracted to the flat coastal terrain that reminded them of their homeland (although the heat and humidity most certainly did not).  Nederland's Dutch heritage is commemorated by the Dutch Windmill Museum located on Boston Avenue.

Perhaps the most famous person ever to hail from Nederland is country/western singer, Tex Ritter, father of actor John Ritter, also recently deceased.  Tex is buried in the Oak Bluff Cemetery in neighboring Port Neches.  Members of the Ritter family are still prominent in Nederland, and the name still graces the Ritter Lumber Company.

Basketball player Kendrick Perkins of the NBA's Boston Celtics was born in Nederland.

[welliwont]

Drumheller, AB

I am quite familiar with the Drumheller Valley, I used to go camping there a lot in my earlier days, it is a spectacular place to see, a big long valley just gouged out of the earth, about 50 miles long, just beautiful.  For anyone who has seen the movie Quest For Fire, Horseshoe Canyon is where they filmed the opening scenes.  And finally I can find pictures that measure up to the fine pictures that you all have been posting!


Approaching the badlands can be a stunning experience. Most vacationers who come to Calgary, southern Alberta's major city, head west to the mountains and lakes, places of undeniable majesty. The road less taken is to the northeast, through the prairie to Drumheller 90 miles away. For most of the way it is a drive through order: broad rectangular fields of wheat, crossroads at neat right angles, grain elevators and barns that seem to celebrate all that is plain and durable. Finally, over a crest, I was surprised by the prospect of chaos.

Below the rim of the prairie lies the jumbled terrain of wide canyons and narrow gullies, bald mounds and rock pedestals resembling lithic mushrooms. It is treeless except for some cottonwoods along the meandering Red Deer River and is bounded by steep bluffs. At first sight, all I could do was repeat the immortal exclamation of the old prospector, who upon seeing the Grand Canyon is supposed to have said, "Something awful happened here!"

What happened was a natural catastrophe. At the end of the most recent ice age, about 12,000 years ago, the receding glaciers released torrents of meltwater, sweeping away topsoil and gouging out canyons to expose dinosaur-bearing sediments. The eroded result is badlands. The term is a translation from "les mauvaises terres," which French trappers in the early 19th century used to describe the rough terrain of the western Dakotas. So apt is the term that geologists and cartographers adopted it into their own nomenclature for similarly barren and rugged landscapes elsewhere.

Drumheller is a human-created oasis in these badlands. From the early years of this century through World War II, it was the commercial center for several mines scattered in the hills and canyons. As the mines shut down, the town went into a decline, now being reversed mainly by the discovery of "gold" in dinosaurs.

[moremojo]

Richmond, Texas

--the county seat of Fort Bend County, an area rich in alluvial soils (my late grandfather called it "some of the best dirt in the world") and steeped in Texas history.