Another beautiful river, another long bridge, another amazing experience

Alberta is a province blessed with the magnificence of the Rocky Mountains, endless fertile land and almost unlimited oil underground.  Visitors flock to the province like no other and for good reason – Banff and Jaspar National Parks are among the best in the world.  We had used their capital, Edmonton, as a fly-in, fly-out point to attend our nephew’s wedding in California but now we were back in the saddle, so to speak, and ready to head north to Alaska.  Well…sorta.

The indoor wave pool, fake beaches, zip line and wild slides all add to the fun of the West Edmonton Mall

Edmonton is also the home of what in years past was described as the largest shopping mall in the world.  And no wonder with horrid winters the wise locals would head to the warm indoor centre which features hundreds of shops and restaurants plus an ice skating rink, a huge wave pool with outstanding water slides and zip lines, a pirate ship, live animal shows, a couple of mini golf courses, cinemas and more.  The huge malls of Hong Kong, Singapore and Dubai have probably surpassed the West Edmonton Mall now but never mind, we enjoyed a couple hours there exploring all the outstanding shopping and entertaining facilities…plus we did a little shopping ourselves.

Our plan, if you can call it that, is to head north into the sparse reaches of this province and then make our way to the capital of the Northwest Territories with the perfect name, Yellowknife.  From there we would pass into the Yukon Territory and eventually make our way to Alaska.  Well, that’s the plan.

A healthy beaver lodge right next to the road – but the beavers are hard to spot!

The first step was to head north out of Edmonton across flat rich fertile fields where farmers are growing bumper crops of canola, wheats and other grains.  We camped our first night back on the road tucked in behind a huge pile of gravel just off a little dirt road, a perfect spot to begin our ongoing battle with the mossies and black flies.  We haven’t killed them all but we’re trying.

Okay, our first night’s camping spot wasn’t glorious – Julie called this Gravel Mountain

But Yellowknife is way north so onward we went through a normal Canadian grey morning, arriving at the intriguingly named-town of Slave Lake for substantial supplies and a lunch spot at a ‘public beach’ on Lesser Slave Lake.  Believe me, you couldn’t get any ‘lesser’ public beach than this one.

Even in the northern stretches of Alberta there was the occasional glimpse of farming

Tramp is sporting a new sticker telling the world we’re from
Australia as well as a new licence plate

From Slave Lake we followed Hwy 88 through remote trackless land, thick pine, spruce and the occasional aspen hugging the roadside, passing through little indigenous communities of Loon Lake and Red Earth Creek.  We travelled long distance without seeing another car and enjoyed the remote solitude.  We pulled off on a dirt track and camped at a pretty little spot next to a small lake surrounded in healthy green reeds which we cleverly named Reed Pond and performed major surgery on Tramp’s hydraulic system to replenish the oil and get his roof to go up more smoothly and straighter.  Clever hydraulic engineers, we are.

Fortunately Julie brought along a hydraulic engineer to keep Tramp going up and down

Our last day in Alberta was marked by a northward trajectory along long straight roads, endless (read monotonous) forests and a few huge rivers.  We crossed the wide and mighty Webasca River and stopped off at the historic town of Fort Vermilion on the banks of the even wider and mightier Peace River.  Like many small remote communities, Fort Vermilion has a high First Nation population and a history of fur trading and logging.  It is a picturesque setting on the banks of the river but the few hundred people that allegedly live there probably wouldn’t see many future opportunities.

We crossed over many beautiful rivers – and sometimes wished it was a good time of day to camp

From there we advanced in another long straight line to the town of High Level which has a fabulous name for these northern parts and marks the last turn before heading into the Northwest Territories.  We had high hopes for High Level but after dragging the dusty Main (twice) we left at high speed.

Another beaut place to camp

Another gorgeous river – they make ’em big up here

We hit the 60^th parallel in the late afternoon and crossed into Northwest Territories, the vast unpopulated land that reaches all the way to the Arctic Ocean.  We had seen and enjoyed many aspects of Alberta and we knew there would be more to come because on our southerly journey from Alaska we plan to hit their famous national parks.  Alberta seems to have it all!

A very big moment in our travels this year – crossing the 60th parallel and passing into the huge Northwest Territories