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Friday — September 4
The dreary day — overcast skies, on-and-off drizzle interspersed with sudden downpours, and stiff breezes that chilled the air — made it easier to leave Jasper behind today. Although our flight back home isn’t until mid-day tomorrow, for all intents and purposes our vacation has come to an end. And it did so with a bang — but more about that later.
Since we didn’t have to check out until 11:00a, we took our time this morning. We had hoped to enjoy breakfast on the porch, but the morning chill made that impossible. Instead, we ate in the dining nook, packed our bags, had a snack on the porch, and left Alpine Village behind around 10:30a — but not before capturing a photo of a black bear cub climbing a tree!
I never said it was a real bear cub!
Our morning plans didn’t go quite as expected. The Pocahontas Mine Trail was a bust with little remaining to be seen of the former coal mine; the Punch Bowl Falls were a mere trickle (glad we didn’t do the hike to get there); and the Miette Hot Springs reminded us of a giant communal hot tub.
Mui tries his hand at being a coal miner.
You’d think all of the above would have made for a disappointing end to our last day in JNP. But no. Had we not done those things, we would have missed the perfect end to our vacation: a black bear in the bushes just before the JNP exit. The encounter got better when the bear came out of the bushes to walk in the clearing, standing up occasionally to pick berries from the high branches. Couldn’t have asked for better.
Just when we thought we wouldn’t be seeing a bear on this trip …
… out comes a black bear from the bushes for a perfect roadside encounter.
It would have been hard to pull ourselves away from our bear sighting, but he made it easy by turning around after a while and disappearing into the bushes.
After bidding JNP farewell, we didn’t stop until we reached Hinton. At the Natural Resources Interpretive Center we had a picnic lunch and Mui drooled over what he would fondly call a “Tonka truck” — in reality, a coal mining truck.
Mui doesn’t know what the sign says; I’ll tell him later!
That’s a big Tonka truck!
This mining truck would have moved 12,000,000 tons of rock during its 20-year career.
When we got back on the road, I pulled out my laptop to edit blog entries and weed through the black bear photos I had taken. Before I knew it, we were at the Edmonton city limits and I was putting aside my writing to provide navigational assistance.
The drizzle that had dogged us from Jasper turned into a steady rain as we found our way through the Edmonton neighborhoods. Bagging our plans for exploring downtown Edmonton, we detoured to the West Edmonton Mall, which claims to be the biggest in North America and the fifth largest in the world.
Noting that it was past 6:00p, we decided to get a bite to eat first. We couldn’t resist going to the Old Spaghetti Factory — we have fond memories of the one at Trolley Square in Salt Lake City, Utah, where we lived for 8 years. I ordered my favorite — spaghetti with mushroom sauce; Mui decided to be adventurous and ordered the linguine with red Thai curry and prawns. Not gourmet food by any stretch of the imagination, but good comfort food.
Old Spaghetti Factory — West Edmonton Mall
Afterwards, we wandered around the mall for a bit to see some of the attractions I remembered from my visit in 1990 when I attended a regional convention for Desk and Derrick, an educational organization I used to belong to. We checked out the replica of Columbus’s Santa Maria, the Waterpark, and the regulation-size hockey rink. All of the attractions were closed for the day, but since we were using this more as an opportunity to stretch our legs than to entertain ourselves, we didn’t really mind.
Replica of Columbus's Santa Maria, complete with pirates and a sunken treasure.
During the daytime, the waterpark is a happening kind of place. Not so after hours.
By the time we left the mall at 8:00p, the rain was over. In fact, the sun was out. Having been on the go all day, however, we decided to head to the hotel — the Radisson where we spent our arrival night in Edmonton.
Tomorrow, we head back to the US. We had a terrific vacation and we’re sorry to be leaving, but the Canadian Rockies have not seen the last of us … I’m sure we’ll be back someday!
Next Up: Travel Interrupted
