My Move to Berta’….. The Texas of Canada

The move to Alberta has been a great move. I cannot believe that I drove from Irvine, California to Edmonton Alberta in a Kia packed with my personal belongings. The trip was about 1200 miles practically from the US Mexico Border to Northern Canada. The last time I did a road trip like that was my Freshman year at Arizona State when I drove my 2003 Honda Civic from Columbus, Ohio to Tempe, Arizona. That trip was over 2000 miles! Never again will that happen! What makes the story was that I just returned from a deployment in Korea and was barely home for two weeks before I made my move. This was my first job after obtaining my Ph.D. in Civil & Environmental Engineering.

So what made me move to Alberta was research with an NSF-funded project at the U of Alberta which is located in Edmonton. This was my second time in Edmonton. When I first arrived the weather was pretty warm in the 50s and 60s  but the temperature dipped really fast at the end of October and by November we have gotten a few feet of snow and extremely cold temperatures of single digits and negative temperatures.

Fun Fact about Edmonton it is the Most North large City in the World with a population of over 1 million.

I have this thing when I travel to cities I try to compare their characteristics with other cities that I have travelled to in the world and, Edmonton gives me major Midwestern city vibes specifically my hometown Columbus, Ohio. The similarities are that Edmonton and Columbus have similar populations, and cover similar land sizes with Edmonton being about 300 sq miles and Columbus being about 215 sq miles which means they are sprawled types of cities. They both have outer belt Freeways like Alberta Route 216 (Anthony Henday Drive) and Interstate-270 Freeway in Columbus. They both have major rivers which flow through their city centers. Both cities are very multicultural with many Immigrant groups. Both cities do not have too many things to attract them besides malls, large universities aka U of Alberta, and Ohio State. The cities could be sister cities!

*High-Level Bridge Edmonton

 

At the end of October, there was a solar flare that caused some disturbances in Earth’s magnetic field and allowed for the Northern Lights to reach further south than normal to places like Edmonton and Calgary. This is such a rare event maybe once in a decade for the lights to be viewable from within the City of Edmonton especially with all of that light pollution. Man, I wished I took the time out to drive outside of the city to even get a better view of the lights but it was like -4 oF that day and I was not about to freeze just to hope the lights were going to be visible.

*Northern Lights From Solar Flare in October 2021

In order to even know when the Aurora Lights occur you have to check a website like Aurora Watchers. I believe they measure the electromagnetic activity in the sky and once it reaches a threshold you will be notified about the probability of seeing the lights. As you can see this is a very rare event that happened. Those lights were vivid and were dancing gracefully into the sky while morphing into different colours and shapes. This was the first time I have ever seen anything like this and I was geeked and stay up to watch the event all night long until the sunrise. It was so pretty and so cool to get to have a view of Downtown Edmonton with the Aurora Lights in the background.

The railroad tracks and the glowing sky is my favorite picture of it all.

For Halloween, I decided to go to the Fort Edmonton Park’s Dark Night haunted house event. It was pretty fun it was supposed to be scarybut it was not very scary. I heard people screaming like they are scared. Thinking about it I grew up in Ohio which is known for having some of the scariest haunted house attractions and been going since I was 5 years old. I guess I could call it a tolerance for haunted places.

 

Some of the Christmas lights at the Legislative buildings. Oh, yea Edmonton is the Capital of Alberta Province.

 

This is the West Edmonton Mall (WEM). It is the largest mall in North America I think it has about 5.3 Million sq ft of commercial shops with a rollercoaster park, waterpark, bumper cars, and an ice skating rink. The mall is the answer to what people do in Edmonton during the harsh winter months. A lot of people will just hang at the WEM because there is so much to do there to keep people entertained in the warm indoors.

*Galaxly Land

*West Edmonton Mall Ship

Yes, This mall is so large it has a lake inside it with a ship and submarine diving.

I found this really interesting cafe called the Nake Cafe in the city center and they have weekly open mike where people come in and play a variety of music and songs. I usually would go weekly and just hang out and listen to these amazing artists. The owner of the cafe is such a really nice guy and man we can have a conversation about anything. I highly recommend you to stop in for a visit if you are in Edmonton.

 

*Naked Cafe Lounge

 

 

*Naked Cafe Lounge

 

Overall Edmonton is a quiet, city that people back in my home city would call a giant farm town because of its lack of a truly metropolitan region.  Besides the extremely cold weather here it is a very nice city to live in. It is very affordable to live here and the incomes are very high because of the oil fields that people work in. I would highly recommend visiting here and also Jasper National park is about a 3-hour drive west of Edmonton on the TransCanada Route 16. It is better to visit in the warmer months because many of the roads in the Winter season in Alberta are not accessible especially through roads that travel through the mountains.