Every year, in the fall, Sue and I hold our Annual General Meeting (AGM) for Martin Parnell Enterprises Inc. My business is as a Professional Speaker and Author and we pick a location to visit for a couple of days. The objective is to review the previous year’s business activities and plan for the upcoming 12 months. We also want to spend some time in a location that we’d like to explore. This year we had the added challenge of COVID-19 and it was important to follow all the safety protocol laid out by the Province.
In previous years we’ve been to Calgary, Canmore and Revelstoke and this year we picked Drumheller. Over the years we’ve travelled many times to Banff and Lake Louise and yet I was surprised that the drive to Drumheller is under two hours. The other positive is that from Cochrane it’s an easy trip, heading North on the 22 for 10km then, East on 567 and 9 for 140km to the town.
Driving into the town the first thing that struck us was the amazing landscape. From the rolling foothills of the Rockies we entered the world of the Drumheller hoodoos. These are internationally recognized icons of the Alberta badlands are composed of sand and clay from the Horseshoe Canyon Formation. The solid, strong capstones protect the softer, underlying base creating their unique mushroom-like shape.
During next two days we played tennis at the Drumheller Valley Secondary High School, did the Red Deer River walk, had a coffee at Black Mountain Roasters and took numerous selfies with dinosaurs sitting on park benches. However, the highlight was climbing the tallest T-Rex in the World. Here is the T-Rex by the numbers:
- 86 ft (25 meters) tall
- 106 stairs to climb to the top
- 12 People can fit in the mouth at a time
- 4.5 times bigger than a real T-Rex
- 151 feet (metres) long
- 65 tonnes (145,000 lbs) in weight
- She's a female
- She cost $1,065,000.00 to build
Entering the mouth of the T-Rex we spent a few minutes surveying the skyline of Drumheller between two rows of three feet long jagged teeth.
It was not all fun and games. Sue and I got down to work and came up with a plan for keynotes, workshops and the next book for 2020 -2021. We also scheduled September 2021 for the next AGM but haven’t picked the location. Any thoughts?
© 2020 Martin Parnell
