Day 38 and 39 ALL WHO WANDER ARE NOT LOST...BUT IT SURE FEELS LIKE IT A LOT OF TIMES

I'll start with the sunset on our last night in Calgary. This photo is taken from the top (8th) floor of the hotel looking at the Calgary skyline. The interior hall light is reflected on the inside of the glass in a very intriguing way. Where's the National Enquirer when you need them?  😅

DAY 38

It's only about a 3 hour drive from Calgary to Edmonton on Highway 2, their equivalent to our Highway 400, ridiculous number of trucks included. Therefore, we stopped at the Discovery Wildlife Park in Innisfail, about a third of the way along. 

I usually love places like this. They rescue animals that are injured, abandoned and cannot be released back in the wild for any number of reasons. I had to question just how much better off they were in these enclosures with nowhere to go. It's not even a good environment to take photographs due to the double layers of tight chain link fencing. I would not recommend stopping there.

"Mommy, there are emus in my pool!"

This grizzly did not look happy to be here.

The traffic thinned out as we got to Red Deer but built up significantly as Edmonton came into view.

DAY 39

This sounds like a joke but it isn't. A Baptist, a Jew, 3 Mennonites and a Muslim step into an elevator. They all smile cordially at one another with a pleasant morning greeting on the short 4 floor ride to the lobby. There are no harsh words, inappropriate comments, violence or any negativity at all. Canada is a fabulous country; we can all get along - everyone wants the same enjoyment out of life. All we have to do is try...and leave religion and politics out of any and all conversations. I wish I had a photo to go with this.

We decided to return the car early, just after 8AM, to avoid interrupting our wasting the entire day. To offset that a little we walked back to the hotel, a distance of 4 kilometres, on a road through an entirely industrial area designed for vehicular traffic only. Even the stop lights gave no recognition to pedestrians and of course there were no sidewalks. We saw no one walking. It was hot for this early in the day, about 25 degrees, a little too hot for my 3 to 17 degree liking.

pedestrians were not even in mind when this route was designed

The Epic Canadian Northern Adventure has been one of the best yet. We drove a total of 7,355 kilometres in 39 days. If you add our flight over Nahanni and our trip to Cambridge Bay, Nunavut we travelled a little over 10,000 kilometres. 

Steve and Mary came to see us off. They welcomed us to Alberta and now, as Steve put it, had to make sure we left. A nice pizza dinner in the Whitehead vacation finale tradition made our adventure complete.

And so the adventure comes to a close. We leave tomorrow morning. It has been an absolutely amazing time for us. Thank you all so much for tagging along. I will post a final wrap up in a few days when I have had time to take it all in. I'll let you know when it is up.

😎