Road Trip
Trip Start
Jan 03, 1976
1
136
167
Trip End
Ongoing
Edmonton,
Alberta,
Canada
Tuesday, November 14, 2006
Its 13 hours drive, without including any stops, though we had to constantly stop for my snack breaks. Our first stop was the tiny town of Hope, not so far out of Vancouver. There was a Remembrance Day parade featuring genuine Canadian Mounties. This was my first Mountie sighting, outside of tourist stores that is. Brad was very excited and chased them down the street and came back reporting that there had been female Mounties too.
Just outside of Hope we hit a massive snowstorm.
beware the wild animal!
Snow was pelting the car and you could hardly see in front of you. The snow calmed down after a bit but it kept snowing for most of the rest of the weekend. We were all a bit excited about so much snow and were talking about it the whole drive. We crossed the border into Alberta at around 8pm, by which time it was pitch black. Never ones to miss a photo stop though we climbed out of the car and wandered around in the snow and dark taking random pictures. We then drove up to Jasper, well into the Rockies, and had dinner in town. We had planned to stay in Jasper the night but decided to get a bit more driving behind us and headed to the town of Edson, a couple more hours on. It's a bit of a truckie stop town.
We woke up on Sunday to snow and more snow, covering the ground. After breakfast at a truckie stop diner, some truckies, and us and we then headed off to Edmonton! At one stop I decided to move the car, it was parked on snow and I wanted to see what it was like to have a turn. I then got a bit of a taste for it and kept driving, unfortunately I'm "slightly" unlicensed to drive in Canada and kept imagining I was seeing police cars so I didn't drive too long, but I can claim driving in two Canadian provinces now! Finally reaching Edmonton just before lunch on Sunday
Border (into Alberta) crossing
. Edmonton has, what they claim is (I cant guarantee it!) the Worlds Biggest Mall - I don't know about worlds biggest but its big. After checking out some of the malls extra attractions, huge waterpark, putt putt golf, Casino, rollercoaster, SEALS, fun rides.. I ditched Brad and Tracey and went on a shop fest for two hours. I don't think they recognized me behind all my bags when I met back up with them; some of them though I can claim are Christmas presents! I was missing one bag though, I bought the world's cutest shirt and put it down in one store to try on a jacket, turned around and someone had stolen it! I couldn't believe it, after all my travels and the times I have done incredibly stupid things (like leaving mine and Adrian's passports in a bathroom in Ireland) nothing has ever happened, until a Mall in Canada! Canada, a country that just got ranked Worlds Safest (according to an email Tracey sent me this morning). I was so distressed I bought myself a pair of boots to console. And then went back to the store of the worlds cutest shirt and bought myself another.
All malled out we drove into town and were excited to find ourselves in a city again. Vancouver is quite small and I forget how much I like a city. We drove around and had a look at the town, it has a historic drive with lots of fairy lights on it, and a nice oldish building for the Legislature
Driving Conditions
. We then headed to Whyte Street and had dinner and a bit of a look around there. We had planned to stay in Edmonton but again decided to head a bit further back, and stayed in Edson again, in the same room! We heard on the radio that it was -11 degrees, the coldest I have been in - the car windows were icing up - on the inside! Monday we woke up and it was snowing again, and the car had even more snow on it! We headed up to Jasper for some brunch and found a restaurant that was one story up so we had a nice view over town. We wandered around town a little and then admitted it was probably time to drive back. Jasper is about 8 hours from Vancouver..
We stopped for dinner in Merritt, Canada's Country Music Capital! Its much smaller than I had thought it would be, and sadly we couldn't find a giant guitar like in Tamworth. On the drive back again a couple of hours from Vancouver we hit another crazy snow storm. There was so much snow it was banked up on the sides of the highway it was almost as high as the car, the road was empty and was covered in snow. I heard driver Tracey making cracks about bobsledding..
We finally got back to Vancouver about 11pm. It was my Mums birthday so I had to ring Mum and then I crawled into bed, so tuckered out. Though we didn't stop too long in places it was a really pretty drive, through lots of mountains and several scenic "ahh" moments, not to mention all that snow.
