Perhaps my childhood obsession — filling the pages of a sketchbook with pastel portraits and the facts I’d gleaned from the How and Why Wonderbook of Dinosaurs — 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.
Rather unintuitively, however, this leg of the adventure began in the galactic future, where I met the crew of the U.S.S. Enterprise — 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 anyone might ever hope to own — including a photo of oneself sitting in the captain’s chair on the bridge. Of course, I sat. A short walking tour past sci-fi murals on
