Courtenay and District Museum and Palaeontology Centre·12 hr 25 min by bus · 184.1 km
! $36.75 a child is over your $10 budget
Cost
$36.75 a child
$588 for 16 children
Children aged 4 to 16 are $36.75 and children under 4 are free. A family rate of $173.25 covers 2 adults and up to three children aged 4 to 16. Courtenay Museum members get 15% off all tours.
Fieldy handles all communication and booking for you.
What it actually looks like
Photos from Courtenay and District Museum and Palaeontology Centre's website
Our note
There is no bus in this. You have to arrange cars between the museum and the river for the whole group, and the museum says a vehicle is required. It runs three hours end to end and the second half is on a riverbank, so dress for weather and rough footing. Under fours come free.
What the children do
A guided tour that starts at the museum with a short talk about local fossil discoveries and a walk through the palaeontology galleries, then moves out to a fossil site on a local river where everyone gets to look for a fossil of their own. Hammers, chisels and goggles are supplied and you keep what you find, though the museum may ask you to donate anything of scientific value with the finder's name attached. Prices here are per person, and the museum also publishes a family rate. You have to provide your own transport between the museum and the river site.
Sit in the museum for a short talk, then walk through the fossil galleries to see the elasmosaur and other specimens. After a ten minute drive and an easy five minute walk through forest to the river, they put on goggles and use hammers and chisels to split shale and hunt for a fossil to keep.
Good to know
Tools and safety goggles are supplied, tours run Tuesday to Saturday at 9am or 1pm, and you pay in full when you book. Toilets, lunch space and bus parking are not mentioned anywhere, and you drive yourselves to the river.
Sources disagree. Their school programs page has been showing two different prices, an older one of about $120 plus tax and a current one of $150 for a group of up to 30. The $150 is what the page shows now. Get the price confirmed in writing when you book.
Sources disagree. The fossil tour price has been shown two ways, once as $36.75 for a child and once as $35 with tax added on top to reach the same total. Either way it comes to $36.75 a child, but ask whether tax is included so there is no surprise.
