#157. or, Night at The Museum

 I settled in. My spot, tucked in next to the outcropping, gave me a good view of the camp as I unfurled my bedroll and took position to watch over my end of the camp. They made far too much noise for my liking and it made me wary. We were in dangerous territory and I was fully aware of the nest of Hypacrosaur eggs behind me and that the mother would be around to watch over them.

  As my eyes adjusted to the dark, I knew that the nest was the least of our worries as I could make out the shape of a Triceratops off to the left of the camp.

   For God's sake, if they would only quiet down, we might get through this night. But most of the crew was young and inexperienced, giddy even, to be out on site. And that might just be the thing that got us all killed. Because now, with my eyes fully adjusted, I was painfully aware that less than 50 feet away stood the fiercest of all the dinosaurs......a Tyrannosaurus Rex, we were all doomed.


  But not really. Mostly that was all me letting my imagination get the best of me,  because all of these dinosaurs were mounted skeletons, and my spot by the outcropping was really next to a giant pillar that held the roof up.  I was part of the grade 7 field trip to the Royal Tyrrell Museum in Drumheller Alberta. Which was really cool, because we all got to spend the night in sleeping bags on the floor in Dinosaur Hall. Well, as cool as trying to sleep with a group of 50 some odd kids can be, after them getting up early enough to be at the school at 6:15 AM to get on a bus for a 5 hour ride, then spending the day learning about Paleontology, running them all into town for a quick swim, then getting them back and trying to calm them all into slumber at around 10:30 can be.  But it was all fun nonetheless.

all the comforts of home, without my comfy new bed

  Unfortunately, as it decided to rain on us most of the first day, we weren't allowed to go out on the badlands hike that was supposed to be a part of the tour. It seems, that a good deal of the badlands are made up of Bentonite. Which, while dry, is pretty much mild mannered dirt. However, when it gets wet it turns into, for lack of a better term, snot of the Earth. And as fun as trekking out into that with 50 grade 7 kids sounds, authorities with far greater powers than mine decided against it. Who am I to argue? I was there to drive the bus.

the wheels on the bus go round and round

  On the second day, the weather was a bit better and we took the kids to Reptile world as a part of their tour and to the suspension bridge where they were supposed to study it for an upcoming test on structures. I'm not really sure how they're going to do on that test, but I suspect, if they got tested on running up the hill on the other side of the bridge, they would all pass with flying colours.

  Overall, it was a good trip. I always enjoy field trips. (except maybe the one to the hair show, but that one wasn't so bad either.) Probably the worst part of the trip was having to clean up some kids pee off the top of the urinal in the museum bathroom. How out of control do you have to be to pee on TOP of the urinal. They're grade 7's, none of them are that tall yet.

  Having done a couple of these long trips now, one other observation that I've made is that a kids bladder will shrink, relative to the proximity we get to home, on the return trip.

  On the way down, we had one planned stop to have a bathroom break, refuel the chaperones on coffee, and have the kids spend half of their allotted souvenir money on candy and bucket sized slushies. (the candy and slushies weren't planned, more a side effect of putting 50 kids, free of their parents in a truck stop convenience store.)

  Coming home, we had more than a few kids, my own son being one of them, crossing their legs or doing the pee pee dance when we were still more than 45 minutes away from our scheduled stop. Of course, it didn't really help that everyone that didn't have to go was making wooshy ocean wave sounds and talking about every conceivable water related topic under the sun. Plus, while we were stopped, and it was suggested that everyone try their hardest to empty their bladders because we were pushing straight through to home, the other bus had to make a second unplanned stop for more peeing. Some of the kids (my son) asked if they could pee in an empty water bottle, but one of the teachers said that wasn't such a good plan.

  ............I had to agree. My son has enough trouble getting all of his pee into a 14 inch toilet bowl. Hitting the 1 inch opening of a water bottle on a moving school bus would have been damned near impossible.



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