Day 4 --> Regina, SK to Edmonton, AB

Day 4 --> Regina, SK to Edmonton, AB 781 kms.

New total = 3,616 km (comparison it is 3,558 km – to go from Niagara Falls to Key West and back to Savannah, GA)

Day 4 lead me up the Yellowhead Highway from Regina to Saskatoon. What does someone do when they are in Saskatchewan? Well you count grain elevators. Along the way there were some old wooden ones and some new concrete/metal ones too.

I went to Earl's Restaurant in Saskatoon at the recommendation of Louis Prue; the owner is some one he used to know. Saskatoon sits on a river and its nickname I learned is the City of Bridges.

I went past the University and even found Bottomley Avenue. There was a light freezing rain but soon that passed as the sun came out for the drive to the Battlefords.

From the Battlefords (North Battleford and Battleford) the drive headed west towards the Alberta border and Mountain Time. I was kind of disappointed with the border, a tiny sign strapped to a street light. I was able to watch the GPS unit as I crossed the 100th Meridian. For the lack of a proper picture, I will instead show you the flag of Lloydminister. The extra hour came in handy as I still had a ways to go to get to Edmonton. It is interesting all of the legislation to get this city to work such as being a PST free city and having the same time-zone. This is not one of those cases (like Texarkana, Texas/Arkansas or Kansas City, Kansas/Missouri), where it is actually a case of two cities next to each other in different states, Lloydminster is a united city with one civic government for both halves of the city.

image by Arnaud Leroy, 31 March 2006 Source: Lloydminster town hall

Pushing through high wind gusts between 60 & 70 km per hour. For those of you reading in Niagara it was kind of like driving in high winds on the Burlington Skyway for about 30 minutes. I did brave the cold north winds to visit of all things, an EGG. Ashley Shultz (who I met through the Forum for Young Canadians) was from there and she gave me a lapal pit this egg on it so I had to see it myself. The Egg did make it pretty far in the Canadian CBC 7 Wonders contest which Niagara Falls won (remember that the Sleeping Giant didn't make it into the final 7 for those of you from Thunder Bay) The Pysanka Egg made to celebrate the 100th anniversary for the RCMP is really an immense jig-saw puzzle containing 524 star patterns, 2,208 equilateral triangles, 3,512 visible facets, 6,978 nuts and bolts, and 177 internal struts. Sorry about the blurry picture it was blowing a sand storm and it was really cold so I was probably shaking while I was taking this picture.

I made it into Edmonton, the City of Champions by about 8:30 and drove west to the MALL. It had been 14 years since I had been there. It is much like it was back then, I didn't see the submarines and or dolphins but they still have the rink, water park and specially important for Christmas, the SANTA Maria... I got to my hotel did yesterdays blog entry and went to bed. I will leave you with a picture of a prairie sky.