We’d decided to drive the 350 km to Edmonton primarily to visit the train museum there. It seems that the North American leg of our trip has somehow achieved a focus around water parks, pools and train museums. Quinn was so excited he bounced up and down in his seat almost the whole way!

The first order of business when we arrived in the metro area was finding a place to camp. We drove into a provincial park (like our state parks) and found out that the sites there were booked through the long weekend. So we pulled out our Alberta camping guide and started calling around in search of a place with an opening. Thank goodness we’d paid to get a Canada plan added to our AT&T service!

After calling 3 more campgrounds we found a place that could accommodate us. It was a commercial campground on the western side of Edmonton in a town called Stony Plain. Our experiences with commercial campgrounds so far haven’t been the best (picture RVs stacked up as far as the eye can see), and our expectations were even lower since we’d figured it was likely that all the goods campsites were probably taken.

When we pulled up to the campground it looked full to capacity and we’d feared that they’d planned to put us in the crowded lot across the street. It turns out that they were indeed full, but that they had set aside a spot for us inside the campground after all.

The site was very basic. It was on dirt, without trees or even a picnic table, but they gave us a 50% discount from the usual fees and we were truly just happy to have a decent place to stay.

Ultimately we were surprised to find that we really liked staying there. We were right next to the main building, so we had fantastic access to the washrooms and laundry facilities (both of which were clean and in pristine condition). The other benefit was that there was a blue-grass music festival across the street and it appeared as though the vast majority of the people staying in the campground spent all of their time over there so we pretty much had the campground to ourselves! Plus the Internet wifi actually worked so we got caught up on email and web updates fairly quickly.

The next morning we drove into Edmonton in search of the Alberta Railway Museum. It took us awhile to find it as the mapping software that we used took us to the wrong place at first (it was Apple Maps — we won’t make that mistake again!). Ultimately it was on the northeastern side of the city and quite a distance from the city limits too!

The museum didn’t look like much at first. They did have the steam engine running for the holiday weekend and that was our main draw. It was Engine 1392 which is celebrating its 100th birthday this year. We bought tickets, and since we had awhile to wait for the next train departure, we opted to take the walking tour of the grounds.

Train 1392 is 100 years old this year

We’re so glad that we did! There was an amazing array of engines, mail cars, kitchen cars, passenger cars, and cabooses to wander through along with a very nice array of placards describing the history of each car. They even had displays depicting the development of the diesel-electric engine and the overall Canadian railroad history. It was fantastic!

Engineer Quinn

The steam train ride was fun too! Quinn couldn’t stop smiling the entire time. We also found out that apparently there was some famous hockey player visiting the museum that day with his family. We don’t have any idea who it was (we’re fairly clueless on that subject), but we do know that it wasn’t Wayne Gretsky. 🙂

On our way back across town, we stopped at a large splash park with a sizable playground adjacent to it. It had been fairly cool out most of the day but it warmed up considerably in the afternoon so it seemed like a good way for Quinn to get his wiggles out.

There was no wifi at the park but Jen still managed to get our update for Jasper typed out while Witt took on the project of adding some more structural support to one of our cabinets in preparation for the bumpy roads that our undoubtedly in our future. It’s kind of wierd to break out of your tools and start wood-working in a public park, but you gotta do what you gotta do.

Splash Park!

Screen time

Van-turned-woodshop

As it was still the holiday weekend, we opted to return to the same campground (CampNClass) that we’d stayed the previous night. Although by then it was nearly time to close the front office we found out that the manager had already booked our spot for us — even though we hadn’t even paid yet! What great customer service!

While Jen set up our camp, Witt & Quinn went to check out the blue-grass festival but quickly turned around when they found out that it would cost $55 per person to gain admittance. Since we could hear the music fine from our campground (without it being too loud) it seemed wise to enjoy the show from the comfort of our van.

Now we are on the road again. This time we are driving north and west toward the start of the Alaska Highway in Dawson Creek, British Columbia, by way of Grand Prairie, Alberta, and some more scenic highways along the way!