Alberta!

Hello everyone!

Greetings from the food court of the West Edmonton Mall where I am struggling to get through a plate of 5 items from the Oriental Delight. I still have a half a plate and a huge chicken ball in front of me and I have stalled considerably. Not to worry though, as I will be here for at least a couple of hours while Sara B. satisfies her Sex and the City fix while watching the new movie. I was gonna go see Shrek 3 (or is it 4 now? Maybe it's 4..) but decided I would get some grub instead and hang out with Schragooster and people-watch. Great place to do it as you'd imagine.

Meanwhile, I have decided that Alberta is Canada's best kept secret. Edmonton (or at least the mall) has just about anything you can ask for: a roller coaster, an indoor wave pool, an ice rink, a casino, a pirate ship... Haha the only thing missing is a baseball diamond and a basketball court (which I'm not convinced they don't have). I have been to the mall just about every day since I got here last Sunday and haven't really gotten bored of it.

Nextly, I have been driving around a lot and have come to the conclusion that Edmonton has the best radio stations out of all of the cities I have been to. I can get a steady flow of good, modern country, classic rock, pop, classical, and I even caught an Italian station this morning on the way to church- it was funny I stopped on the station because the song wasn't working properly and the DJ (in Italian) was just like "well, sometimes these things don't work properly... Let's start over from the beginning". Haha - tell me, have you ever heard a song on the radio that just stops playing, mid-song? I mean as much I know it happens, to hear it on the Italian station just made my weekend.

And a pretty incredible weekend I have had at that.

Friday, Sara Brown and I decided to take off for the city of Jasper, AB, located comfortably in the valley of Jasper National Park. Only about a 4-5 hour drive from Edmonton, Sara and I took to the highway armed with a full season of How I Met Your Mother (great show) and without any reservations for accommodations in Jasper. We figured we'd find a place once we got there, right? Wrong. The cheapo places we were fixing to stay at were booked solid and so we made the game time decision to go "camping" in our Nissan Versa for the night.

We made a bonfire, took a little hike, cooked some hot dogs, had a little bit of spirits before we called it a night while it was still light out around 11:30 pm. That's right, it was still light out. Crazy, eh? We made it to about 2:00 am before we took to the road to find ourselves a proper hotel room for the night. The campsite was fun and all, but the freezing cold?- not so much.

Because we were able to warm ourselves up and because we spent our horseback riding money on a hotel room, we decided to take the sky tram to the top of the mountain that we had been staring at since we got there. Great decision. Here is the mountain from below:




We made it to the top fairly quickly and decided (again, perhaps a little brazenly) that since we made it this far, the extra little hike to the summit was necessary. This, despite the fact that we possessed no appropriate hiking gear and their were ample warnings from the tour guides and the clearly marked signs saying that it was ill-advised due to weather conditions and a recent bear sighting.

Who are they to tell us to turn around when we are so close?! So up we went (following the lead of several other groups ahead of us) in our croc-sandals, winter jackets with no toques (or winter hats as we call them back home) and our run-of-the-mill, everyday, take-a-picture-at-your-friends'-birthday-party cameras to conquer one of the highest mountains in the Rocky Mountain chain - Mount Marmot (or was it called Whistlers? I still haven't figured that out).

A couple of inuksuks, whistling marmots, amateur photographs, wet socks, and several tumbles later we made it back to the chalet-restaurant area at the top of the tramway having conquered the mountain and with our body temperatures probably about the same as they were the night before while slowly freezing to death in our sedan. Ahh the great outdoors!

As if this wasn't enough, we still wanted to see some animals so we made the call to go hike up to a point where supposedly sheep usually hung out. While there were no sheep there, we did encounter some elk along the way and on our way out of town we saw some sheep wayyyyyyy up on the side of some mountains. I am still miffed as to how the heck they got to where they were and what their intentions were of getting down. Short of learning how to repel down a mountain side I don't know how they were going to do it.

The entire trip back it rained and just as we were pulling into Edmonton it decided to snow for a couple of hours. That's right, snow. It's Memorial day weekend and while my entire family is canoeing down the Au Sable river in 80 degree weather, I pull into a heavy falling of snow in the greater-Edmonton area. I actually really enjoyed it though, because it seriously felt like Christmas - also because I went to the mall and bought myself a present: a World Cup 2010 Team USA soccer jersey! USA! USA! So excited for the world right now. There is nothing like a good old fashioned sporting event to bring people together.

Alright, well, the other half of this OD stir-fry medley is staring at me coldly from the plate to my right. Work must be done. As the French Canadians would say "Au revior", gopher.

PS- Pictures can be found here: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2766245&id=2207325&l=686c7fc0bf


- Sent via Schragooster

Location:87 Ave NW,Edmonton,Canada