CRAM: The Worlds Worst Tour Of The West Edmonton Mall

This is Plan B.

Our road trip so far has taken us to Edmonton Alberta. Plan A for today was to visit a friends funky studio and shoot some models, and other studio type deals.  However due to circumstances beyond anyones control, Plan A became untenable.

So we switched to Plan B.

Plan B is spending a couple days at the largest mall in North America, the West Edmonton Mall, and stay a couple nights in the hotel attached to the mall: Fantasyland.

So grab a Timmies and come along on the absolute worst tour of the West Edmonton Mall anyone can possibly imagine.

So first things first.  FantasyLand hotel is attached to the mall, this means we didn't need to get into our car all day - which is awesome for a road trip, right?  I have zero pictures of FantasyLand, which goes to prove my assertion that this is the worst tour ever.

The West Edmonton Mall is more than stores - tho it has 220 of the money sucking retail establishments.  It also has a full size hockey rink.

 And a pirate ship.

And a whole mini-golf course.

And a Debbie (tho she is not for sale - sorry fellas, I got the last one).

We met up with some Scavenger friends to check out the mall.  They went skating.  True story.

The mall boasts a massive water park, and a large amusement park (with a few huge roller coasters).  I don't have pictures of those either, of course.

It does have an aquarium, including sea lions.

Bonus: this tour includes a close up of a sea lion:

The sea lion is also not for sale.

So we spent the entire day at the mall, doing retail, eating foodstuffs, and generally making a consumer nuisance of ourselves.  We absolutely did not put any time into creating an awesome tour.

To distract you from that, here is a Lambourghini (ooh, aah).

So there you have it.  The worlds worst tour of the West Edmonton Mall.  I hope you enjoyed it.

Today was obviously a down day on the grand tour we've been on.  It is important every once and a while to take a day just to relax and be in one place, even on an epic road trip.

Tomorrow we're on the road again, heading up into the Rocky Mountains to Canmore to start the main event of this roadshow: CRAM.

See ya then.

Wordless Wednesday

CRAM: Sunsets in Edmonton

In story tale time (aka mid-July of this year), my wife and I had a slow-ish day in our grand adventure across British Columbia and Alberta, on our way to visiting a bunch of crazy photographers in the Albertan mountains.

It was actually a day that didn't go as planned.  In fact these next two days were off-script.

You see, we had plans to explore Edmonton, then invade a dear friend and his funky studio the next day. However due to unfortunate circumstances beyond anyones control, the studio visit was no longer a possibility.

So we switched to Plan B. Sounds good, right?

So we spent a bit of the morning making some plans for the next day, then we hit the road.  We had plans to meet up with some friends in Edmonton for supper, and we had about 3 hours to go.  We took a trip a bit north, and circled inwards into Edmonton, and ended up at a restaurant with my friends at a fine Canadian family-style chain restaurant.

Ya know, its kinda an odd quirk of the nation, but many of the fine chain style Canadian based eating establishments are named for places not actually *in* Canada:  New York Fries, Montanas, East Side Marios, Swiss Chalet... and the place we arrived at:  Boston Pizza.

Spoiler alert: I had pizza.

Afterwards we headed off to take some photos of the setting sun.

One of the great things about mid-west Canadian cities is that it does not take long - in this case, 5 minutes of driving - to get into deep farm country, and its many scenic landscape-y views.

Another advantage of the deep farm country with scenic landscape-y views type areas is that they are light on people - so stopping in the middle of the road for 5-10 minutes to take photos is not a problem.

 It allows one to get shots like this one.

And this one:

The earth constantly rotates.  This has many benefits, such as bringing us golden hour twice a day.  However what the spinning earth giveth, the spinning earth taketh away, so soon we ran out of pretty light, so we headed back to the hotel.

We have cool and awesome plans for tomorrow, but I'm not going to tell you what they are yet.  Why?  No reason. I just feel like being cagey.

However, here is a clue.  This is the view outside our hotel window.

Intriguing, is it not?

CRAM: Icefields Parkway Part Deux

Welcome back! Apparently I did not do enough last post to scare you away from reading my blog by showing you awesome scenery captured poorly of the mean mountains in Alberta.

I shall attempt to do better this time.

Prepare yourself.  Its gonna get chilly up in here.

Very chilly.

Cold as ice.

Ice, ice baby... too cold, too cold.

etc.

So our adventure has brought us to the Columbia Icefield Discovery Center, which is the best of nature mixed with the worst of humanity, all rolled into one giant Cinnabon of awesome agony.

Agony because the crowds, oh my sweet lord the crowds.  90 minute waits at the restaurants, all full of tourists (there are few things worse than tourists - and yes, I realize I was one at that point. Luckily years of listening to Nirvana has prepared me well for self-loathing and living in denial).

Awesome because, well, the view off the front porch:

See what I mean?

So the Columbia Icefield, of which the above shot was taken at its Center of Discovery, is a ginormous (real word!) glacier that covers, literally, a huge large area, some of which is visible from the so called aforementioned Center of Discovery.

If you have more money than sense, you can go out on a special tour bus and go out on the ice, but I grew up rural Canadian, and my wife is genetically dutch, and a farmers daughter, so we balked at such extravagance.  One can also walk almost up to the glacier, which is free, so what we did.

For a sense of scale, this shot was taken with a good 1/4 mile between me and the ice.

It is a tad largeish.  It was also a surprisingly tough hike.  It was only a quarter mile or so from parking to the overlook area, but it was at 6500ft elevation, the path went steeply up hill, and I am a lazy fat guy, so we took the advice on the signs to "take things slow" and "don't kill yourself." on the way up.

Spoiler alert:  I survived.

Once we got our fill of ancient ice, we moved on up the parkway a ways and stopped by this waterfall.

While I was waiting for tourists to stop climbing on these falls so I could get a shot, I witnessed another awesome tourists at work.  So there was this father - 50s, say, as a rough guess, start to climb out on the rocks in front of the waterfall - ya know, to get close... cause what could happen?  He was clad in a wind breaker, dress pants, and cheap dress shoes.  As he inched closer to the water over slippery wet rocks (cause it's a waterfall, also it was raining), he beckoned for some ladies, which I assume is his wife and teenage daughter, to come with him. Insisting it was safe - I mean, this is nature - what could possibly go wrong?

Seconds later he flipped out and landed in the water, landing rather ungracefully on his side.  He was unhurt and... awesomely... kept beckoning the ladies to come, cause what could possibly go wrong?

The ladies refused.  Those are smart ladies.  Dude was dumb as the rocks he landed on, but the ladies: quality minds at work.

Anyhoo, we kept going, as one does on a road trip, and soon ended up at the Athabasca Falls, where we saw... water falls!

The park was actually kinda cool a they had trails, and a bridge, that one could get quite close to the water fall, and really feel the power of the water... um... falling.  It was very impressive.  

We moved on and soon ended up at the end of the Icefields Parkway in Jasper.  Our hotel was still an hour down the road, and at this point my wife was busy arranging (yay Project Fi and international data roaming!) a meet up with some Scavenger friends for supper near the hotel, so we now had a deadline, so we moved on quickly.

They say Canada has two seasons,  winter and road construction.  It was the height of road construction season, so we were stopped several times. However that allowed me to get this shot:

... and a couple klicks down the road, this shot:

So I decided road construction season wasn't so bad after all.

CRAM: Icefields Parkway Part One

So, like, ya know?

Yeah, you know.

You do know... right?

What do you know?

Today is Icefields Parkway day!

(insert loud cheering and applause).

Lets hit the road! [high fives all around]  Shotgun!

So, if you are not familiar, the Icefields Parkway is a road that runs north/south thru not one, but two national parks in Alberta, all along some of the prettiest mountains you ever did see.  Today on our epic road trip (which, if you recall, actually happened two months ago), my lovely wifey woke up in Golden BC, and have plans to drive that highway.  It will take all day.

It will be a good day.

So first stop is Field, BC.  It is not much of a town, but it is picturesque.  As evidenced by the first picture on this post.

It turned out it was raining all day, so there was a lot of mist, fog, rain, moisture, and waters of various other forms in the air.  Made for some dramatic mountains:

  And some full looking mountain rivers.

 After this we hit the parkway itself.  Being in National parks means that there is no cell reception, and many scenic turnoffs.  The first one we used, completely at random, was at Herbert Lake.

When the fog cleared, the mountains were spectacular.

 It is hard to get bored on a road like this, eh?

 I made good use of my panorama settings on my camera.

 A good chunk of the parkway runs along Bow River, which looks suspiciously like this:

 At one point the road took a huge bend, and went up a steep incline.  When we got to the top the view back down the valley from whence we just came was incredible:

We were having a blast exploring the area:

But alas, we've been driving all morning, and it was getting to be lunch time, and there is only one place to get food on this road:  The Columbia Icefield Discovery Center, just a few more klicks down the road.

Floor it!

CRAM: Stoked in Revelstoke

If you work for Hertz car rentals, please ignore this post.

Today (and by today I mean the story being told today, not actually today, as the story actually happened back in July), was bookmarked by taking a rental vehicle in places where one shouldn't really take a rental car.

My wife and I woke up in Kamloops BC, grabbed some Timmies, and headed down the Trans-Canada highway heading east, doing some geocaching and exploring along the way.

The first cache was at the Kamloops tourist bureau.  The second was an awesome Lego themed cache down an abandoned road, which was being used by the local ambulance folks to do training - so I had to dodge their training (at least I didn't need to worry about being out of reach of medical help should I have needed it).

The third was supposed to be a leisurely drive to an overlook that "totally can be done by a normal car".  Since Hertz "upgraded" me to a Toyota Highlander SUV, I was like "no problem!"

Turns out, a bit of a problem.  The cache is up a one mile dirt road that maybe could have been driving by a truck with some care... however in a rental (one thing I learned, rental cars come with crap tires and are poor substitutes for actual decent cars) not so much, and since I didn't want to risk damage, or getting stuck, I we decided to pull over and walk up the rest of the way (about a half mile or so).

"Gee, I have to hike in the woods in B.C.?  Shucks!".

So we marched.  It  was basically all uphill, and at a higher elevation. It nearly broke my wife, but I kept going and got to the top.  I was greeted with some awesome views of the Thompson River.

Along the way, we came across a Canadian travel bug from Ontario (which is way the heck over there ---> if you are facing north,  <---- if you are facing south).

We then arrived at a pivotal moment in Canadian History (tribute).  The location of the Last Spike.

So way back in the early days of Canada (like during the term of office for the very first Prime Minister, Sir. John A MacDonnald), it was determined that a railway was needed to go all the way from the east coast to the west coast in order to properly unite the country.  So bils were passed, funds were funded, plans were hatched, bribes were paid, and a railway was built.

This location was where the last spike was ceremonially hammered into place, completing the railway (however there are apparently 4 locations that claim the Last Spike for various reasons and interpretations of what qualified as "coast to coast", however this one was the one I arrived at, and its in a place called Craigellachie, which is a great name, so I am declaring this place the official location - besides, it has a multi-cache, so it wins).

Appropriately as we gazed upon the memorial plaque, a train thundered by.

Once we waxed historical, and signed the cache log, we headed to Revelstoke.

Yes, Revelstoke.

Why do I care about Revelstoke?  Because its mentioned in a Corb Lund song, so I heard of it, not to mention it us super fun to say "Revelstoke" (try it... all together now... Revelstoke... see what I mean?)

Anyway, to continue on irrelevant details, Revelstoke has 3 bridges.  This is one of them.

 It also has an A&W.  Let me tell you, when you have faced the wilds that is the B.C Interior, this sight is like an oasis to a parched nomad in the Saharra.

We ate lunch in Revelstoke (ah, Revelstoke), and hung out a bit by the river, then we kept going up Rogers Pass.

Rogers pass is named after a guy named Roger, which is super unexciting (unlike the upcoming pass: Kicking Horse Pass, which was named because a guy got kicked by a horse there - gotta love how things are named, eh?)

Right around this shot is where my wifey feel asleep and took a nap, so I kept driving like a well behaved maniac.

We also crossed the timezone into Mountain Standard Time.  I love crossing timezones because it means you've been somewhere.  (Also, if you cross one while your wife is asleep beside you, it confuses the heck out of her when she wakes up: Sweetie, look how long you slept!"

It was at this time that we arrived in Golden B.C, the place where we were destined to spend the night.  However instead of taking a right to the hotel, we went left in search of a geocache.  The cache was up the top of a mountain up a long narrow gravel road.  It was only 1 mile away when we turned onto that gravel road, however it took us almost an hour of driving to get to cache, because that road was windier than things less windy than it.

It did lead to some fantabulous views tho.

The road was also dustier than things less dusty than it.  So we had to wait for the dust to clear to get shots, but it was worth it.

Once at the top it was another hour down to the town.  Once there we celebrated by doing laundry (no one said everything with road trips is glamorous), then we hit the hotel.

Today was scenic.  Tomorrow promises to be scenicer.  For tomorrow we go to a Field, and then tackle the Icefields Parkway.  Should be epic.

Wordless Wednesday