ROAD TRIP CANADA 2014 PART III

Maligne Lake Jasper

We're on the road again and the weather is still way too hot, but it's not something we have a choice about.  One consolation, since deciding on a 55-60 mph speed limit to save fuel I don't feel so bad about running the air conditioner (in the car).  There are tent trailers with air but it seems a little incongruous considering the wall are made of cloth.  Finding places to camp in or near metropolitan areas is always a difficult proposition and Edmonton is no better or worse.  The decision process ends up being somewhat arbitrary.  You start with Woodalls, a publication that lists RV sites by city,  Listing by cities are not always that useful particularly when it's the general vicinity that is what you are interested in, not a specfic place.  When Woodalls falls short, there is the internet . . . when available (we are camping after all). We track a place down with a description that says half an hour outside of Edmonton.  It is the capitol and a fairly big city after all, so we are figuring we'll be on the outskirts of town, the suburbs if you please.  Suburbs, in my mind that equals 1) easy to find and 2) not too far from a grocery store.  NOT.

Tent Trailer en-route

 We call for directions:  "From Hwy 16 take Rge (range road) 212 north 13 km to Twp (township road) 544 . Go east 5 km to Rge Rd 205.  Go south and take the entrance on your left as you go over the crest of the hill."  Let's start with we are navigating with maps and as often as not, each road, highways in particular, can have three or four numbers associated with it.  So finding Hwy 16, is not nearly as simple as it seems.  Never mind that we have been traveling on a  brand new piece of road that is not even shown on our map (thank you AAA).  We find Hwy 16 and head off East. Edmonton is disappearing behind us.  In fact I am not entirely certain we have even seen Edmonton, just vast stretches of housing giving way to even more vast stretches of yellow rape seed.  We count off the tunings, Rge 215, 214, 213. ah found it, Rge 212 and there is nothing.  We haven't seen any signs of civilization in miles and we're turning off a 4 lane hwy on to a two lane road, but at least it is paved!  So I'm thinking "Okay, we are out in the middle of nowhere, but perhaps things will improve.  It is after all 13 km ahead of us that we will make our next turn."    

You guessed it, not so.  The next turn is from a two lane country road on to an even smaller, narrower and less well maintained rural road.  Having already counted down 215, 214, 213 to get to 212, it would seem logical that we would continue that process until 205.  Our logic seems to be holding until there is a sudden jump from 209 to 204 and then 203.  We're about ready to look for a way to turn around that does not require a whole lot of reversing with a trailer in tow, when the next intersection turns out to be 205.  Boy those Canadians need some lessons in simple number theory, eh?  

Where we turned left

Yes we make it, and indeed it is "over the crest of the hill" where we turn, only to pull up in front of someones home.  Guess they had acreage and a yen to manage an RV park because there are hook-ups for water, electric, sewer and even internet, not to mention laundry facilities for perhaps 30 "campers".   As we pursue this odyssey I'm thinking there will be a town, or at least somewhere to pick up ice, fresh produce, and just, generally speaking, food.  We inquire . . ."go back out and turn right (north) and follow the road for 20 minutes and you should reach Brudenheim, they have a market."   Just to make the point,  half an hour from Edmonton is in reality half an hour to the outskirts of Edmonton and we are well and truly out in the back of beyond . . .  within a quarter of a mile the road goes from paved to dirt and I can see for miles and miles and miles and it is nothing but yellow.  Brudenheim has an auto parts store, a gas station, a post office and market the size of a 7/11.  Ice they have, but the only fresh vegetable are cabbage and potatoes, the meat counter has sausages and the frozen food case lasagna and ice cream.  Yep, sausages, mashed potatoes and sauted cabbage for dinner but there were Oreos, SCORE!!

Orthodox Church

We spend the next couple of days touring in and around Edmonton.  The Capitol Building, which looks much like any other capitol building; the Ukrainian Cultural Center and Fort Edmonton.  The Ukrainian Cultural Center and Fort Edmonton are both Living History Museum, which are right up our alley.  The Capitol Building (aka the Alberta Legislature Building) was really more about adding to our collection of "state capitols".  


Western Canada was heavily settled by people emigrating from the Ukraine.  Those settling in the prairies of Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba where largely farmers, lured by offers of free land.  They were granted land for agriculture much like in the US.  If they cleared the land and made it productive it was theirs to keep.  It also served the purposes of the Canadian government to populate the open prairies with "Canadians" rather than Americans,  thus precluding the US from annexing what we now know as British Columbia, Alberta and Manitoba.  
  

Sod House

The building at the Ukrainian Village that most fascinated me was the burdei or sod house.  It, unlike the other buildings on the site, was a recreation rather than one of the historic structures that were moved to the site.  Never really thought about how to build a dwelling when your focus is putting the land under crops not building a house and how would you acquire lumber out on the prairie anyway.  The simple solution, although not particularly sturdy is a sod house.  First cut some trees and create a tent shaped structure, perhaps 6 or 8 feet wide by 10 feet long. Then  go find yourself some grass with think densely packed roots, not too difficult a task on the prairies.  Next step cut the sod (grass) in to bricks about a foot wide, four inches thick and several feet long.  Lay them in overlapping rows over the tent structure making sure to leave room for a chimney, a narrow door (too small for a bear to enter) and a window (see it the door).  Home Sweet Home.

Grain Elevator

The other fascinating aspect of the museum was the research that is done on every structure.  If you speak with a re-enactor they will remain in character and not just a general character but they will have learned the history of person they are portraying.  They will converse providing details on how they arrived, the size of their families, where other relatives reside, how they came to have the particular house, or business, or job.   They are for all means and purposes real people and they have real stories.  There are store owners and hotel operators.  There was a man plowing a field with a team of horses and there are three Orthodox Churches that still hold services.  Loved the hardware store where I was able to inspect plans for several different styles of barns and the grain elevator that was on site.  If you wanted a barn you could order the whole thing, from plans to paint and have it delivered down to the last nail. Small wonder so many barns look identical.  


We finish off Edmonton with the Fort.  This time it is not original but a recreation comprised of multiple streets each reflecting a different period in Edmonton's history.  It was okay, learned a lot at the Fort which was never a fort in the classic sense.  There were no soldier and if was never meant to defend a town.  It was really just a glorified trading post operated by the Hudsons Bay Company, another of those names vaguely remembered from middle school history lessons. 

It's time to hit the road again,  Jasper, Banff and Lake Louise beckon and it is time to meet up with our traveling companions, Carol and Frank Sobotka.