Jasper

Jasper is a great little town all nestled in the Rockies.  It finally stopped raining and we had a great couple of days there.  We stayed at the Jasper/ Whistler Campground just a bit out of town.  It is a huge campground and we all stayed mostly in one loop making it nice for our happy hours.

One of the great benefits of staying here is the many elk we saw close up.  We were told that they stay in the park with their young to keep away from the bears.  The pictures were great of the elk close up.

The second day we were in Jasper it stopped raining and turned out to be a beautiful day.  I took a few pics in the town.

We enjoyed ourselves visiting all the quaint little shops in Jasper and we finally were able to use the Internet at the Visitor’s Center.  I wish I had Wi-Fi at each campground as it would be so much easier to keep up with my posts, but unfortunately that is not the case.  Sometimes we would not have any Wi-Fi for several days.

Beaver Boardwalk

After Jasper and on our way to Edmonton in the town of Hinton we stopped at the Beaver Boardwalk.  There is a boardwalk that winds through the wetlands and is the home to many beavers.  We didn’t see any beavers but saw evidence of their dams everywhere.

It had just started to rain so the pics are a bit dark.

Edmonton and the huge Edmonton Mall

We made it to Edmonton and camped at the Glowing Embers RV Park, which is a huge campground about 8 miles from the mall.  It was the biggest campground I have ever stayed in with over 700 sites.  Many of the sites were occupied by permanent residents and there were RV’s of all shapes and sizes.  They had Wi-Fi but to get  a highspeed connection you had to use the arcade next to their office.

We were there 2 nights and on the first full day many of us visited the Edmonton Mall, which is supposed to be one of the biggest mall in the world.  Big is not a good name to describe it.  HUGE is much better.  We only were in about 1/3 of the mall and we saw many things you would never find in a mall.

There was a huge children’s play area.

A gigantic pirate ship.

A indoor swimming area complete with huge water slides.

then there was the full size hockey/skating rink.

Victoria Settlement

After leaving Edmonton our journey headed for the “Iron Horse Trail”.  We stopped at a small settlement know as the Victoria Settlement.  We were given a great tour of the entire settlement by a student guide.  She told us many of the details of how life existed when the settlement was first formed.

We started by watching a short video in a church that was built in 1906 about life in the settlement.

then she took us on a very informative walk around the entire settlement.

This is the clerk’s quarters built in 1864 and still standing in it’s original spot.

The tour lasted 2 hours and then it was on to Whitney Lake Provincial Park.  This was bear country and it we opted not to use the electricity as it was only a one night stay.  One thing I may have forgotten to mention is that it stays light until 10:00pm.  That was very hard to get used to.  This is a pic of my site.

Miquelon Provincial Park

The following day we drove 186 miles to the Miquelon Provincial Park where we had a group site for all of us.  They had an nice room indoors where we all participated in a great potluck dinner.  It was a good thing we were indoors as a huge thunderstorm hit the area at the same time.

We all had a great time and stayed nice and dry, but we had to make mad dashes to our rigs it was raining so hard.