CANADA DAY 4
Elk Island National Park
Astotin Lake
Royal Alberta Museum (Edmontosaurus)
Story time:
This was a more relaxed day. I had seen that Elk Island National Park east of Edmonton was a good spot to go see bison so I really wanted to check it out. Unfortunately the loop road was closed and the bison stayed hidden most of the time. We opted to try one of the shorter loop trails to stretch our legs and maybe five minutes from the parking lot hoards of mosquitos appeared out of nowhere. Thankfully I had bought some spray, but they were pretty relentless. The trail was muddy and forested but eventually opened up by a series of lakes. We passed some people and one of the women told me that she had seen a huge bison near the trailhead (another said to my brother “Mosquitos are bad today, eh?”, which we thought was funny) but we didn’t see it. Finally when we were driving out I noticed a speck out of the corner of my eye, and sure enough way off in a field was a bison. I got a nice shaky and blurry video. Then of course the second I turned out onto the highway there was another one right there on the side of the road and I couldn’t get a picture of it in time. We ended the day at the museum which was cool but they closed at 4 so we didn’t get much time. After that we drove a little bit south to stop for the night in Camrose.
BONUS:
Lake in Elk Island
CANADA DAY 3
Athabasca Falls
View towards Jasper
Jasper Lake
Edmonton skyline
Commonwealth Stadium
Story time:
This day started off with heading back south for a quick stop at the Athabasca Falls, which we had skipped the previous day due to timing. On the way back I opted for a side route which gave us a nice, quieter, scenic drive back up to the town of Jasper. Unfortunately we didn’t have much time to spend in the Jasper area, and so I started the long drive east towards Edmonton. We stopped for lunch at a brewery in the town of Edson, my brother tried a beer that was pretty good. Our purpose for visiting Edmonton was to watch a game of Canadian football (this is a side tangent and the end of the story time, so you’re free to skip ahead to the bonus if you don’t care about football).
So I’ve been to a ton of college football games, but this was technically my first “professional” football game, which I think is really funny. The stadium was cool (love the color of the seats), the atmosphere wasn’t the best to start, but in fairness the Elks also got off to a bad start. In the second half though they started to come back and the crowd got really into it which is one of the things I love in any sport. I have to say the three downs system is insane, I don’t know if I like it or not, but it was impressive to watch the drives go down a longer field even with that limitation! I would talk more about it but I’m out of char
BONUS:
Athabasca River
Same view towards Jasper
Jasper Lake
whoops I got really busy and it’s been almost a month already
CANADA DAY 2
Lake Louise
The Beehive over Mirror Lake
Lake Louise
Pika eating berries
Peyto Lake
North Saskatchewan River
Athabasca Glacier
Story time:
This was a super long day, we got up before sunrise to get to the lake and then I foolishly stayed up I think until almost midnight since there was a chance for solar activity. We started off hiking up to the top of the Big Beehive (second picture) which was incredible. I got some tea at the tea house and sat with a bunch of pikas while I drank it. After coming down we took the Icefields Parkway north, stopping here and there. Highlights were Peyto Lake (steep and crowded though :\), Mistaya Canyon, and the Athabasca Glacier. Don’t ever try this at home but I actually walked out onto the glacier, which was mind blowing and awesome (but seriously, please don’t do it, its super dangerous and I’m stupid). By the time we got back to the car it was like 5 or 6 and we still had a ways to go to Jasper so we booked it north. There was no aurora that night, but the stars were pretty good at least.
I brought along a disposable camera on this trip and I took so long to do this second post that the film finally got developed and sent back to me. So I’ll be attaching a couple bonus pictures from the camera going forward too!
BONUS:
Mount Lefroy
Lake Agnes
North Saskatchewan River
I recently spent 6 days in Alberta for vacation and I took almost 500 pictures on my phone, so now I gotta figure that out
CANADA DAY 1
Calgary
Approaching the Rockies
Bow River Valley
Banff
Lake Louise
Story time:
My flight was supposed to leave late but got delayed further so I missed my connection in Toronto. Thankfully Air Canada actually provided a hotel so I got ~3 hours of extra sleep and in the end it worked out nicely because we got to see the mountains driving in from the city. The original plan was to land around 02:00, get the car, and drive straight west in the dark but I liked the way things turned out in the end. Had a spontaneous lunch at a brewery Cochrane where the waitress loved our Virginia licenses. Ended the day at the campground below Lake Louise
so uh update on this apparently the government sued amazon because they were just signing people up for prime without them knowing
I found out about this because I got an email from venmo saying the FTC had sent me $51 (the max payment allowed by the settlement) and that didn’t seem real so I looked it up and yeah wow big surprise amazon sucks
I never quite understood those advertisements for apps that track your spending to catch subscription stuff, but this morning I was looking at my bank statement and discovered that apparently I’ve been paying for amazon prime since April 2022 
went through some screenshots on my work computer and found this awesome automatic transcription of a voicemail a coworker sent me exactly a year ago
anyway now that I’m back and have consistent internet connection again I will be posting canada pictures soon. I got some crazy stuff
attempting a flight to calgary but I might end up stranded in toronto we’ll just have to wait and see 
this morning npr played moog city on the radio after advertising a story about data centers for later and it was very surreal
