You Never Know Who You'll Meet En Route

It was two years ago- in the summer of '07 - while en route to the summit of Mount Kilimanjaro that I ran into some new friends. While standing to check into our flight heading from London to Ethiopia's capital city- Addis Ababa, I couldn't help but wonder just how I knew the guy standing beside me. And than it clicked- it was TV host an animal expert Jack Hanna, who you'll know from his regular appearances on David Letterman, Ellen and his Emmy winning show "Into the Wild." Hanna and his wife Suzi were traveling to Rawanda to produce a documentary with Natalie Portman on the famed Silverback Gorilla's.

With our flight cancelled and our schedule's delayed Jack, Suzi, myself and my travel mates Sue Lambert and Colin Herbert had the chance to share some laughs and time while traveling south to our destinations.

We stayed in touch and that meet and greet turned into some additional adventures. Over the next year and a half I worked with Travel Alberta and a host of folks who helped to produce a stellar road trip featuring some of the best of the best of what this Province has to offer in terms of wildlife. It was just through August Jack, Suzi and the team from Spectrum Productions traveled together through Alberta, Canada filming episodes for upcoming episodes of Into the Wild.

And I joined them.

Follow along through these daily dispatches as we cover some of this province's top adventures.

For more on Alberta and all is adventures check out Travel Alberta's website

Just Like Easter

"If I wasn’t an animal expert, I would have been running around chasing for dinosaur bones,” said a giddy Jack Hanna, who’d adopted the personality of a school boy at Christmas. “I have been to some of the world’s most impressive Valley’s, but never anything like this. Every where you go within 15 feet are more fossils.”Hanna’s right, the Dinosaur Provincial Park is so chocked full, it's one of only 11 Unesco world Heritage Sites in Canada.(5 of which are inAlberta, and the crew visited three).

Found just outside of Brooks Alberta, in the Province's south east corner, we took the day to explore the park and uncover some ancient history.

It’s known all over the world by dino hunters- this Provincial landscape, similar to a mini grand canyons with its hoodoo enhanced architecture, for playing host to the highest concentration of dino bone’s on the planet. Suzi and Jack were out on the hunt with Brad Tucker of the Parks’ Service playing host and ensuring they not get turned around. “It’s very easy to get turned around in the park, so we have some public hikes, but others are with a guide for the day.”

Or you can come out and dig with an team hard at work in the blazing sun. DinosaurProvincialPark is very foreign environment. Desert like conditions meet dino hunters every summer, which bring on some slithering friends. There are four types of snakes which call the park home, including the prairie rattlers, the bow snake and two types of gardner snakes,” explained Tucker.

I remember last year I was on a trip to Writing on Stone- another stellar park in the area. We were en route out of the park when we encountered a rattler on the side of the road- I couldn't believe that our province had snakes this big - what we caught was over 12 feet long. Adam Sutherland is a researcher out of the U of Calgary who is studying the behaviours of snakes and their propensity to road ways. It’s hottest in the summer along the pavement and snakes want to bake in the sun.

When you are there don’t forget to hit up the Patricia Hotel in neighboring Patricia on the way into the park. Even better pitch a tent and find a way into the Patricia Pit, the bar in the basement of the hotel where your served meat on a plate where you can grill it on your own.