Edmonton!

We left a snowy Lloydminster on our way to Edmonton, but it soon cleared up. It looks cold and blustery!

We made a quick stop in Vegreville as they have the world's largest pysanka (Ukrainian Easter egg), and who could resist that!!

At 27 feet long, I would say it is the largest Easter egg we've seen...

From there, right on to Edmonton to visit Jim's sister, Joanne. Here is Joanne's cat, Sara, looking decidedly put out with the whole thing. Visitors, bah!!

On Saturday, we went to the Farmer's Market and bought a few Christmas presents and Joanne bought a bison roast. In the afternoon, we decided a walk in the woods would be a good thing and we headed to Hawrelak Park. It is a large park in the river valley with a manmade lake with lots of ducks and geese. In the summer, they have an amphitheatre where they put on a Shakespeare festival, Symphony Under the Sky, and at this time of year, Bright Lights. They have a gazillion Christmas lights set up. I really wish we could have been there to see it completed. Here is a sneak peek...

A beautiful walking bridge across the river...

Jim and Joanne with "Joanne's house" in the background. Yeah, right!! There are some monster homes on the river...

We went to an Indian restaurant for dinner and it was great.

The next day Jim and I headed to the YMCA. They have a beautiful facility and the girl at the front desk was happy to tell us that her sister had just moved to Fredericton to go to university. Small world...

We had tickets to a dinner theatre that night, but decided in the afternoon to take a "short" drive to the Reynolds-Alberta Museum in Wetaskiwin. The drive turned out to be a little longer than we planned, and by the time we got there, we only had an hour to tour all the exhibits before we had to head back. Rather than race around, we chose to do one building well and it was (you guessed it) the cars! We had a great hour checking out all the unique cars...

An early steam fire engine...

An early snow machine complete with the ad promoting it....

An early Harley Davidson...

A 1929 Duesenberg...

The exhibits were great, set up to look like streets from years ago...

A 1912 Jackson touring car...

Joanne with the same kind of tractor they owned on the acreage outside of Edmonton...

And my favourite, a 1958 Buick convertible. Now that's purdy!

We rushed back to Joanne's place, changed and flew out the door to the dinner theatre. It was called Peace, Love & Rock 'n Roll...all the music of the 60s. It was so good. How much fun to hear all your favourite oldies at one time...the Beatles; Mamas and the Papas; Peter, Paul & Mary; Petula Clark; Mick Jagger; Bob Dylan...it was nostalgic and I realized we're getting old when I was sort of sad because the music was so good then!

On Monday we headed out to do a few errands. Joanne had started a family album and we found a place to make a copy of it. It is really well done and the pictures are beautiful.

We headed back to Joanne's to cook the bison roast. Bison...yum...it is much more flavourful than roast beef!

We had tickets to see Earl Scruggs on Monday. Now on Friday when we arrived at Joanne's, we were looking through the events that were going on while we were there. Joanne said "What about Earl Scruggs?" and we said "Sure!" Honestly, we didn't have a clue. We knew he was a banjo player but that was about it. So the first band that comes out is a local bluegrass band and we were all thinking this was going to be a long night.

The next band was Jerry Douglas. Nope, doesn't mean a thing to us! In fact, we can't figure out why he is playing his guitar flat with the strings facing up. Jim figures he's missing a thumb! Oh what ignoramuses!! The music was really good and in the intermission we learn that he is probably the best dobro player in the world. What do we know??!!

Next up...finally Earl Scruggs. The band comes out and the next thing we see could have been Tim Conway from the Carol Burnett show doing his old man shuffle. It's Earl Scruggs...man, he's old!! The crowd goes crazy. Earl sits down and someone hands him a banjo and off he goes. Sometimes he plays like crazy, other times, he picks with one hand, and sometimes he just sits there and lets the rest of the band play. Hey, when you're 84 and Earl Scruggs, you can do that! He wrote the theme song for the Beverly Hillbillies in 1962 and Foggy Mountain Breakdown in 1949. What a legend! It was really a good evening and we learned a lot about bluegrass!

We woke up Tuesday morning to a blanket of snow. It was really pretty, but time to move on!

Thanks for a wonderful four days in Edmonton, Joanne! We're moving on to Drumheller...