Big Cashew Adventure - Day 9

Well, after a day of nothing worthwhile to talk about, we have a really exciting list of events that we experienced today.  That is we do if you want it all made up.  Today was like yesterday or better, like Ground Hog Day with Bill Murray, except he was not here so it wasn't even funny.  But I have to maintain my journalistic integrity so you get this loquacious, Pulitzer worthy documentary of a dull day,

The day started as all the others.  I get to sleep but cant stay there.  I wake up and have trouble falling back to sleep.  Only this time I could focus on the first hitch in my daily planning, which I can and did blow way out of proportion, which is why I could not get back to sleep.  I finally got up and had my favorite cup of tea as I figured out the next steps.What got me to this quandary was a seemingly innocuous situation.  The plan called for us to leave the campground outside of Calgary and head to Banff and Jasper.  Two towns and two Canadian National Parks.  Banff was about an hour or so away and Jasper was 190 miles.  My initial reviews and investigative work had the Jasper drive to be about 3 1/2 hours to maybe 4 hours.  I get on the computer and go to google maps to verify the trip and check on what to visit.  Google now tells me the way to go is completely around the parks, which would have me retrace steps and take 7 1/2 to 8 hours, at the very least.  I couldn't even get a reading on trying to go through the parks on the road that connects both towns.  I then look up road information for the area and find out the road was shut down by a major avalanche just last Friday.  It was a man made and scheduled one, but they didn't get it right and it was much larger than planned.  But this was cleared up in a couple of days, so what was the problem.  Turns out there are construction jobs in process that slow you down or completely stop you for 30 minutes of more.  After all the driving so far, we were not interested in adding so many more miles so I had to change our direction.  Edmonton here we go.

I Picked Edmonton as it is a major city up here and there was no other route to follow.  I did find out that Edmonton has like the third largest indoor mall in the world.  So off me went.  It is about 200 miles to the mall which took about 3 hours.  The wind picked up so we had a usual buffeting and wondering all over the highway.  While driving to our destination, I was also trying to find a RV site since we dropped Jasper off the itinerary.  I found a couple sites but they were not open for business yet.  It seems like I am always a day early and a Canadian dollar short in this country.  So would be get a place or find some back alley site to park the RV and sleep until morning or get rolled by some unhappy Canadians?  Fortunately, one of the closed site's contact directed me to another campsite. And it was right on our way to the next city on the schedule.

We are in a town called Whitecourt, Alberta CA.  It is a small town, along the likes of Berwick or Coatsville.  They have a Walmart, McDonalds, Wendy's and an IGA.  We even found a Catholic church and arrived just in time for the 5 PM mass.  I did not make reservations after the first 5 days of the trip as I was not sure if we could stay on schedule.  So we have not confirmed reservations for the rest of the trip, but I do not believe this will be an issue.  It is still not Camping weather and the RV sites have been sparse for the most part.  The next two days are set without needing a reservation.  I will check with the next couple of sites tomorrow, but I think we are going good now.  Whoops, I better knock on some wood.

But back to the Mall.  It was rather imposing and it takes like 10 minutes to drive around it.  We looked for a way to get in but all entrances had clearance heights of less than 7 feet.  We had no where to put the RV.  Finally, at the end of the circle around the mall, we found an open parking area.  And there was one RV already parked there. so I moved in towards the back end of the lot and took up two spaces.

The mall is truly huge, with aisles of stores that you can barley see the end of.  Many of the same stores as in the States, but they have an amusement park in side the building, which is probably the reason the roof is over 8 stories high.  There is also a water park and a professional size hockey rink in the middle of the mall, indoors of course.  I watched a game between some high schoolers while Chiara shopped.  It felt good to get out and walk.  We were there for about 2 1/2 hours.  Mostly window shopping but I did get some gelato.  At least it was not a total waste.

We got back onto the road and headed for Whitecourt.  Finding this sites allows me to move this day into the Banff/Jasper schedule, and puts us closer to tomorrow's destination, which is Dawson Creek.  This is the beginning of the Alaskan Highway.  Here we are still moving forward.  Tomorrow, we head to Dawson Creek passing through Grand Prairie.  Maybe stop there to look around a few minutes.  The breaks help as the driving is tiring.  

As just a point of fact, Gasoline is more expensive here, between $.99 and $1.129 per liter, which comes to about $3.40 a gallon.  What a bill I am running up for fuel.  At least the dinners a good.  It helps to bring a great chef along for the ride.

I promise some pictures for the next blog update.