From the moment travellers step off their cheap flights to Alberta, this province's majestic beauty is obvious. Endless prairies, rolling foothills, sky-scraping snow-capped mountains, sparkling lakes and untapped wilderness are what await. Alberta's undoubted jewel is the Rocky Mountains. There are six major ski and ride resorts - Lake Louise, Sunshine Village, Mount Norquay, Nakiska, Marmot Basin and Castle Mountain Resort.
The province may have been named for a 19th-century princess, but Alberta predates her by millennia. The Drumheller Valley in Southern Alberta is the dinosaur capital of the world. The landscape has been carved and worn by time to almost a moonscape. It has the richest deposits of fossils and dinosaur bones in North America, home too to the world-famous Royal Tyrrell Museum.
Edmonton is capital, a thriving petro-city located south of the centre of the province. Its largest attraction might just be the West Edmonton Mall, the largest shopping and entertainment complex in North America, which has more than 800 stores more than 110 eateries.
Calgary, another city with a booming oil and gas industry, is gateway to the Rockies. Each summer it celebrates its Western heritage with rodeo, chuckwagon races, agricultural shows and grandstand shows.
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