Katie's Roadtrip Across Canada: Edmonton

Latitude & Longitude: 53°30'N 113°30'W (1)

Population: 1, 034, 945 (2)
Population Density: 109.9 km² (2)
Landforms: Interior Plains(3)
Climate: Boreal (3)
Ecozone: Prairies (3)
National Parks: Elk Island National Park (4)
Industries: Oil, gas, agriculture and tourism. (5)

Day 1

Getting to Edmonton was our longest drive so far. It took us approximately 1 day 10 hrs to get from Sudbury to Edmonton yesterday. Today we were up for some walking around so we dedicated the whole day to going to the West Edmonton Mall. I was thrilled! I had been saving money ever since Christmas for this day! I was also happy to get out of the car. The mall is huge! It has a water park, an amusement park, every shopping store you can imagine, and great restaurants! My dad and brother quickly got tired of my mom and I shopping so we split up for most of the day. They went to the amusement park and the skating rink while we shopped. My mom and I were having quite the day with 10 shopping bags slung over our shoulders! At around 2:00 we all went to the water park to cool down. My brother and I immediately went on the “extreme” rides which were awesome! My favourite slide was the Tropical Typhoon which was this huge partially enclosed tube that had extremely strong water currents. When you got to the bottom you were in a pool of water which was difficult to get out of.

It almost felt like a vacuum cleaner; sucking me in. (6) To end the day we went to the Old Spaghetti Factory that was in the mall as well! I got the Red Thai Curry Linguine with Chicken. (7) It was fantastic! You could practically live at the West Edmonton Mall if it was open all the time; it has everything!

Day 2

Today was our last day in Edmonton! I was exhausted from walking around all day yesterday, but we still had four more destinations to go to. Sir Winston Churchill Square, the Art Gallery of Alberta, Strathcona Farmers Market, and Rutherford House. All the destinations promised to be good, so fingers crossed! Our first stop for the day was the Strathcona Farmers Market. Everything they sold was fresh and local. I was really excited about going there because I was tired of eating restaurant food everyday! We bought tons of fruits, vegetables, and bread and ate them for breakfast. I got extremely energized by the food and couldn’t wait to explore our other destinations. (8) Next we made our way to Rutherford House; the lovely house of Alberta’s first premier, Alexander C. Rutherford. They had people dressed up, re-enacting what life was like at the

time. Although we were full from breakfast we decided to have tea and biscuits at the Arbour Restaurant anyways. I felt like I was in an old fashion movie sitting at the small little tables drinking tea and eating scones. (9) We were officially stuffed from eating so much and decided to skip “lunch”. The rest of the afternoon was spent looking through the Art Gallery of Alberta. Some of the exhibits were really neat and some were unfortunately boring. My brother, dad and I kept losing my mom because she always spent a long time looking at the paintings trying to analyse them. It was brutal! My favourite exhibit

was “The Art of Warner Bros. Cartoons”. (10) I use to watch all of these cartoons and found it really neat and exciting. The colour and detail in these paintings were phenomenal. For dinner we headed to Ruth’s Chris Steakhouse where I got calamari and the stuffed chicken breast. (11) We then headed to Sir Winston Churchill Square where they were playing Iron Man 2 on a large screen set up outside. The screen was inflatable which I found humourous. (12) It was the end of the trip in Edmonton and tomorrow we would be off to Vancouver.

That’s it for now, but I’ll be sure to keep you posted when I get to Vancouver!