Alberta, Canada

Alberta, Canada

Hello everyone, I hope all is well during week 7 of the quarantine. Sorry but this story potentially had the prettiest pictures however, the majority of my photos were lost when my Iphone died and I told apple to fix the screen and these people had the nerve to reset my phone when I told them not to. Not all is lost I posted a few amazing views of my trip which now I will have to go back and do it again.

So for Starters I decided to start my Trip from Seattle and rent a car and drive through Vancouver, B.C. to Jasper and Banff National park. That was a very long trip and my GPS gave me the logger truck route I found myself on a unpaved road in BC going up the side of a mountain with logger trucks oncoming. I prayed to the lord and used my instincts from work experience in National Forests to find the route would take me back to a major road and 25 miles later i ended up on the TransCanada (TC-16). Fun Fact if you get stuck in rural Canada and you wave for help the drivers by law are required to stop. Some local person I met told me that and I was shocked because if I was in the USA I would not stop because they probably have a gun on them.

From that point on I ended up driving straight to Jasper and slept in a log cabin hotel. Man they upgraded my cabin into a whole apartment with a full kitchen and three bedrooms just for me! I was sad that so much space went to waste and was supposed to have a companion with me but that person backed out at the last minute. People who know me know that I will make plans to travel and if people want to join cool but my plans are always going to go through. Think of me like an Structural Equation Model (SEM) where I am the independent variable and who ever tries to join me in the plans are the dependent variable. Normally Independent variables are not affected by dependent variables but with SEM they both interact and can affect each other. In my case the living arrangements had to be modified even though they still worked out to my benefit by sheer luck.

Jasper and Banff has a lot to do they are pretty much connected parks with Glaciers that you can see and go to. I did the Glacier Tour where you can ride this gigantic bus that can climb 60 degree slopes. The allowed us to walk on the glacier and told us to be careful not to fall into a crevice. It was really cool to ride on that machine. Also the lakes like Morraine Lake  are as fresh as they can be and the water blue and clear where you can actually drink the water straight from the source.

This is the Town of Banff. It is a nice little tourist town with a spectacular view.

The next part of the Trip I went to Edmonton which is about a 5 hour drive from the parks. Edmonton is an interesting city it is the most north city with a population of 1+ million in the world. The winters are terrible up there and I do not know how people function up there in the winters. I know that Canada requires people to have snow tires for their vehicles which are not mandated in the US. Some reason people in Canada refers to Alberta as the Texas of Canada which I am not sure if it is because of the Tar Pits that they extract oil from or their politics because Texas is another level of craziness and when I was told that by locals in Alberta I told them that were too nice to compare themselves to Texas. Edmonton is known for having the largest mall in North America which I believe it is called West Edmonton Mall.  This mall has multiple amusements parks in it from an indoor water park to a indoor roller-coaster park and a large Ship attraction. I also stumbled across this really tiny bar called the Naked Cafe in Edmonton where they have local artist perform live and young and old people mingle and play boardgames. It is the first time I have ever seen young and old people interact in that way. I stumbled across this place and met the owner who I found out used to work on the freeways in Canada when they started developing them (TransCanada). We had an amazing conversation about Canadian roads and one thing I notices was that TC freeways were not fully controlled access freeways outside of urban areas and I learned from the bar owner that Canada tried to mimic Eishenhower’s Interstate Act of 1956 but Canada did not have the population or tax base to set up a complex Freeway system like the US did.

I went to Calgary next which is a larger city located about 2 hours south of Edmonton this was cool city to visit. Their skyline is pretty and there is a famous pedestrian bridge called the Peace Bridge. I also found the Olympic park just outside of the city and during the summer they turn the ski slopes into BMX trails for bikes and have a roller sledding course where you travel like 30 MPH downhill.

The last part of my Trip I stumbled across some old western Village. This village looked like it was being rehabilitated. I believe that it might have been the original city of Edmonton when it was initially founded.

There were many things that I enjoyed about Alberta from its urban cores to its nature preserves. It has a unique beauty like California that many other regions do not have. I look forward to my next trip there and hopefully with some friends this time.