Edmonton - Mall

Monday, August 30.  Happy Birthday, Dana.  Another chilly, rainy day.  Today, we and the Johnsons "did" the Edmonton mall.  The Brundiges did a city tour that turned out to be a private tour for them in a comfortable van.  They went to the legislature, city hall, the university, etc.  They will probably go to the mall tomorrow.

This mall is HUGE.  It's only 2 stories in most places, but it has every store imaginable, along with theme streets (Chinatown, Bourbon Street, etc.) and features such as:

An amusement park with roller coasters and several other rides, adult size as well as children's size.

Cody, Grandpa needed you to go on the roller coaster with him, none of the rest of us were willing.

The mall also included a hockey-sized skating rink.

We walked a little further, and came upon a beach and wave pool, so you could ice-skate and go swimming in one trip.

There were several different water slides that emptied into different little pools.  The big pool did not have the waves going the first time we walked by, but it did the second time.  I looked like a lot of fun, and you wouldn't have to worry about the weather.

You could also try out riding a segway.

Or play miniature golf.

The mall also had some kind of water feature with a big ship and they had shows twice a day, with seals I believe.  We didn't get back there at the right time for the show, but you could also do a submarine ride it looked like.

The mall also had a casino, so I got to spend about an hour in there while Joe rested his feet at the bar.  It was probably about 52 outside, and there were people in this mall in shorts!

We went by this one shop that had a totem pole in the window, so since Mazie wasn't with us we took a picture of it for her.  We think it should probably fit in the back of their truck.

We finally found our way back to the car and then to the campground, but we did get stuck in rush-hour traffic and construction.  We had thought this was going to be our last night together, but Dave and Mazie decided to spend another night here to get their laundry caught up, etc., before they headed off on their own.  I decided to have a little celebration party, so I baked a birthday cake for all the rest of our birthdays (since mine is next), and we spent the evening reminiscing about our trip.  I had put together a picture frame and photo album for each of us, so we had a good time looking the pictures.

Faust to Edmonton

Sunday, August 29 - Well, it rained off and on all night, and again this morning.  Joe picked his way through to the mud to walk down to Lesser Slave Lake and then I drove down in the car.  It seemed a shame not to see the lake while we were parked so close, even though the weather was extremely uncooperative.  The lake is huge, and has a boat ramp and boat slips right in the campground.

David provided this morning's excitement though.  His dental bridge accidentally went down through the overflow hole in the bathroom sink and ended up somewhere in the drain.  He had to dismantle the pipes in the cabinet underneath to get to the trap.  He was using some pretty colorful language when I observed his efforts.

Joe came in to assist, and they finally were successful.  Joe, again, came up with the winning item.  Actually, when he found it, he held it up and said, "what the heck is this."  David said "that's it."  It is only a two-tooth bridge, so it wasn't very big.

But David was a happy camper to find it, and after he cleaned it off, he gratefully put in back in its proper place.

After this time delay, Joe and we girls drove into the little "hamlet" to see a stained glass panel that was saved during WWII and brought to this little church for safety.  It was only one panel, in one window, but we got a picture.

We drove through the rest of the hamlet and found out that Collins has been holding out on us again.  After coming through the Brundige mountains and resort in either Utah or Idaho, we have now learned that he has another secret property here in Alberta.

Pretty sneaky of him to have this little oasis tucked away in such an out-of-the-way spot.  I'm sure he never dreamed we would sniff this little hidey-hole out.

We were obviously getting a late start this morning with David's mishap, and when we headed back to camp to hook up the car, we came upon a blockage on the railroad track.

This is something we don't see every day.  After a short delay, the truck got attached whatever it needed and started backing down the track, and we got back to camp.  We made it all the way to Edmonton, 185 miles, and located our campground, one that Dave and Mazie remembered from their 1999 trip.  We saw small flocks of geese heading south, David spotted a coyote, and Marilyn saw a woodchuck.  I saw birds.

It stopped raining finally, and there is some blue sky around, so we are hoping for a much better day tomorrow as we tour Edmonton.

Faust, Alberta

Saturday, August 28.  We left Dawson Creek this morning, heading east across Hwy 49, then connecting to Hwy 2, bringing us down in the Big Lake area.  We drove for miles past fields of grain.

I talked to a farmer when we fueled and he told me that canola was the big cash crop here.  It was too wet for us to stop by any of the fields to actually look at the grain, but we think this might be a canola field.  He said they have yellow blooms on them earlier, and now there are big seed pods.  The rain really messed us the harvest.  He said they didn't get but about 1/2 inch of rain all summer, and now that they are trying to combine the crops, the rain has set in.

We didn't have the rivers and creeks we have been seeing, but we did cross the Smoky River.  The picture is so dark because it was so cloudy/rainy. 

It rained all day, and the temperature stayed in the 40's all day.  When we got to our campground at Faust, right beside Lesser Slave Lake, it was so wet we didn't even try to walk or drive down to the lake.  There was not much grass in the row of campsites they gave us, so we were glad when we got hooked up and out of the rain.

We got a small crack (star) in the windshield of the RV earlier this week when we came through some road construction, but we had good roads today, just wet.  We spotted one animal, maybe a coyote or fox, but we didn't get a good enough look to determine what it was.

We are heading to Edmonton tomorrow, and should be there for a few days.  We are hoping the weather improves so we can see what there is to see there.  We changed time zones today, so we are now one hour ahead of Arizona time.

Dawson Creek 2

Friday, August 27 - Another cool, windy, rainy day.  It was about 48 degrees when we got up, and it stayed close to that all day, with rain off and on.  We are camped a couple miles outside of town, so we went into town to do errands today, groceries, Walmart, etc.  We had to make a trip back to town to get some pictures, but we did get a few.

  There is a lot of traffic here, with construction work on the gas pipeline and the coal mines around, plus tourists driving through.  We didn't make it into the Visitor Center or the Railroad Museum, ran out of time, so we just got pictures of the buildings.

There's a lot of farm ground right here on these rolling hills, barley we think.  They were combining some of it when we hit town, but the rain has put a stop to that.  There are also a lot of horses around here, which we haven't seen many of in Alaska or Canada, up until now.

We had a pretty laid-back day, read while it rained, then played cards in the evening.  We have never traveled at such a pace, and it is wonderful.

Chetwynd

Thursday, August 26 - We split off for the day, Collins to take his car in to have the battery checked while Marilyn did laundry, and the rest of us headed to Chetwynd.  The trip was well worth it, the wood scultpures were amazing!  There are 100 scattered around the town, with a large concentration of them right around the visitor center.  We didn't see them all, but we found most of them.  Here's some of my favorites.

These sculptures were carved all the way around, and many of them had very neat " backsides."  I really loved this one, front and back.

I thought the "no vacancy" was a clever addition to the back of this one.

This next one was one of Mazie's favorites.

Mazie had her first "near panic attack" of the trip while we were here.  We were out of the car, looking at the sculptures, when all of sudden, she had to go to the bathroom.  Like now!  I thought she was heading back to the car, but she decided she couldn't make it that far, she was dancing!  She was afraid she was going to have wet pants all day, so she got behind a wood fence and found a bush.  Right after that, we took this picture on this carved bench.

But when she sat down, the bench had a little puddle of water, and she ended up with wet pants anyway.

Here's a few more pictures.  They do the sculpting in June, in a 36-hour period.  We would love to be here for that sometime.

There is a huge sawmill on the edge of town, and there were piles and piles of lumber there.  I think this is the logging capital on British Columbia, so I guess that's why the wood carving is done here.   We had lunch (at A and W Rootbeer) then headed out of town, through the little town of Tumbler Ridge, British Columbia's newest community.  It was incorporated in 1981, built in conjunction with the development of the North East Coal resource.  One of the mines here was the world's largest computerized open coal pit mine until it closed in 2000.  There are several waterfalls around this town, but we didn't hike to any of them.  We did stop at Gwillin Lake along the way, a pretty lake and campground.

It ended up to be a 200-mile day in the car, so we were tired when we got back.  Collins' battery checked out OK, so everything is good. 

Dawson Creek 1

Wednesday, August 25 - We got ready to leave this morning, and Collins had a dead battery in his dinghy, so he had to get the battery charger out.  Hopefully, something was just left on, since they didn't unhook the car overnight, and it will charge back up and be fine.  We were headed to Chetwynd today, the chain-saw sculpture capital of the world," and on Mazie's to-do list because of her interest in totem poles.  There is a loop road to Chetwynd, which bypasses Watson Creek But after a discussion at our rest stop, it was decided to continue on to Watson Creek, thereby completing the Alaska Highway, then driving our dinghy down to Chetwynd tomorrow.  That would also allow Collins to get his battery situation resolved.

We drove up and down lots of hills today, and finally came to some ranching and farm country.  We passed a domesticated herd of buffalo in one field, and a few cattle and horses.  They were combining wheat or barley right outside of Dawson Creek.  We talked to some hunters at our rest stop this morning, and they had gotten a bull moose, so I guess that's why I'm not seeing any -- they're killing them all!

We drove through the Peace River valley and crossed the Peace River.  Bridging the Peace River was one of the first goals of the Alaska Highway engineers in 1942, because traffic moving north from Dawson Creek was limited by this crossing, where two ferries with a capacity of 10 trucks per hour were operating.  This was the other suspension bridge on the Alaska Highway, but this one collapsed in 1957, and was replaced by the current cantilever and truss-type bridge.

There was a very nice campground/park right on the bank of this river, but we needed services and laundry facilities tonight, so we passed that one by.  Just after we got set up (2:00 p.m.), a thundershower came through, so we were fortunate that we were already off the road for the day.  We were blessed with a pretty rainbow when it stopped.

We'll be at this campground for a couple of nights to get caught up on our laundry and restock on groceries, and our side trip to Chetwynd.  When we leave here, we will cross into Alberta pretty quick, and change time zones again.  Our next major destination is Edmonton.