Saturday, May 22nd
Gone Shopping
Three centuries thereafter, I take passage overland
In the footsteps of brave Kelso, where his ‘sea of flowers’ began
Watching cities rise before me, then behind me sink again
This tardiest explorer, driving hard across the plain.— Stan Rogers. Northwest Passage.
I am being woken up by a ray of sunshine poking through the curtains. But over breakfast, things turn sour and clouds move in. I take things slow. Write my notes from yesterday. Follow up on news a bit. Then pack my stuff and finally get moving. I start by going north along the border. Downtown Lloydminster looks like a smaller version of big capitalism along the T.C.H.
A bit further north, I turn west. There are an awful lot of slow people travelling this morning. The slowest is one of these green farming monsters. The term monster is to be taken literally. They are so big, they have triple wheels. The abominations they pull are even worse. A big steel skeleton with sharp, pointy things everywhere.
The highway turns left at a sudden intersection without much of any indication. Thus I make a little detour down into the valley of the North Saskatchewan River. Just before the big bridge across, I turn left along a small country road. It struggles hard to get out of the valley before returning to flat farm land. I return to the highway near Clandonald. Most service symbols have been removed from its sign, only a camping site is left.
Occasionally, there are oil wells in the fields. Which bears the question: How do you find oil in the prairies? Do you drill a water well and be surprised by the rather poor quality of the water? How deep is the oil here, anyway?
The landscape turns rather hilly. But then again, the largest town here is named Two Hills. The village of Myrnam has what looks suspiciously like an Orthodox church. After Two Hills, there are two salt lakes which are rather low on water. But it already starts to drizzle.
This weekend is a long one. Monday is Victoria Day, an official holiday. As there aren’t that many in Canada, the weekend is known as the May Long Weekend. No wonder there are so many RVs and other slow moving vehicles blocking the roads. I give up and turn south to take the Trans-Canada, which is a divided highway and should make things easier.
The town of Mundair announces that they were the 2000 winner of Communities in Bloom. They are currently redoing their main street, erecting a large arc on its entrance. Maybe they are trying to win again.
The drive along the fast highway is uneventful. We pass the Ukrainian Heritage Village (so it was an Orthodox church after all) and Elk Island National Park. Somewhere, the highway surrounds a cemetery which is now lying there on the centre median. May they rest in permanent noise.
The road is getting more busy as we enter Edmonton, capital of Alberta. Edmonton started life as a depot of the Hudson Bay Company a hundred years before arch-rival Calgary came to be. The reason I am not skipping it like any other big city so far is the institution Edmonton is best know for: West Edmonton Mall, once the world’s largest mall. On a Saturday, it is hugely busy, but I bravely fight through traffic. I need another book store and this is the only place that reliably has one for the next couple of days.
West Edmonton Mall is a retail dream. Whether that dream is a nightmare mostly depends on your personal view. It features around eight hundred shops, a huge water park (in fact the world’s largest indoor water park), a non-water amusement park, and a casino. If you need more than one day to see it all, there are also several hotels. I certainly am fed up with all this glittering happiness within minutes. But at least I get to satisfy my shopping needs, even though I have to cross the whole bloody thing. The books tore is tucked away in the far remote corner. Heaven forbid casual shoppers are bothered with things like knowledge.
Northbound I let Edmonton sink behind me. With every mile, the road gets less busy. I don’t know whether its the strange light or my mood or both, but the world sinks into an unreal, dreamlike state. I feel like watching it from the outside, like a TV program.
Westlock is the next town at a busy highway intersection. It seems to consist mostly of commercial strips along both these highways. There is a sign pointing towards the town centre, but what you can see from the highway isn’t very promising either. On the plus side, Westlock has the Canadian Tractor Museum and a Pioneer Museum. It also has a huge community hall.
In order to make things even better, it starts to drizzle again. The rain comes in that certain quantity enough to disturb your sight through the windscreen, but not enough to allow the wipers go smoothly. They rattle along the glass with an annoying screech.
Eventually, we leave civilization behind at the crossing of the Athabasca river. It already is a mighty river and hasn’t even travelled half its distance yet. Eventually, it will drain into Great Slave Lake which itself feeds the no less mighty Mackenzie River which runs all the way north to the Arctic ocean.
After the river crossing, the road enters yet another dead forest. This must have been a gigantic fire, as dead trees line the road for more than thirty kilometres.
Eventually, we arrive at the town of Slave Lake, at the southern end of Lesser Slave Lake (Great Slave Lake being more than five hundred kilometres to the north in the Northwest Territories). The town is surprisingly busy, probably the commercial centre of an entire region. It has all sorts of shops and at least four inns. Like most northern towns, it is not necessarily a place visited for its beauty.
I check into a motel. The outer pane of the room’s window features what looks suspiciously like a bullet hole. Even though it is early, I don’t really feel like writing. Instead I opt for some TV, eventually ending up watching the movie ‘Seven Pounds.’ It is one of those films where you are thankful for the ever growing length of the entire closing credits if you watch it in a theatre. Or at least I would. I recover over a beer or two in the motel’s lounge. Well, a little bit. I may have picked the wrong day to watch a movie with such a sad tone and crushing ending. Or maybe this was exactly what I needed.
Beer of the day: Sleeman Honey Brown (there, you can do interesting lagers, even if you are a big brewery owned by the Japanese).