5 Days in Edmonton and Jasper, Alberta

We drove to Edmonton a night earlier than originally planned, and we basically ate and then went to sleep. I grew up going to Edmonton often and the quintessential experience includes a lot of eating, shopping, and staying in. So the next few days probably won’t be described in too many words.

Day 1: Edmonton

It was really nice to sleep in a bed and I think it was the first time in a long time where I slept for more than 8 hours straight. We woke up and were immediately greeted with a bunch of food and that continued for the rest of the day. We did take a break to go to Southgate mall and play some Yahtzee and other games. At night we played poker but we didn’t have any chips so we used my brothers’ decks of cards and determined monetary levels based on the colors of the sleeves. We’d plan to go buy chips tomorrow so we can play again.

Day 2: Edmonton

Today’s big event is going to West Edmonton Mall. It’d be Keon and Lana’s first times going to the mall and I’m in the hunt for a rain jacket. We got donairs for lunch and went shopping in the afternoon.

West Edmonton Mall is a giant mall that once prided itself as the largest mall in the world, and is currently the second largest in North America after Mall of America. Fun fact: both are owned by the same family and management group. Some of its many attractions include: a waterpark, an aquarium, a bowling alley, go-kart racing, an Asian supermarket, and even hotels. My family flew into Edmonton and said that many of the signs in the airport were advertising West Edmonton Mall.

I don’t think we even explored half of the mall, but we were getting tired. We all ended up buying the most things (snacks) at the Asian supermarket and then went back to the house for dinner and a night of roulette and poker.

Day 3: Edmonton

The rest of my family was leaving to go back to California today, my siblings in the morning and parents in the afternoon. Once everyone left, Keon and I went to get some things that we needed for our upcoming camping trip in Jasper. We stopped by a few other stores, again in search of a rain jacket, and then went back to the house to go out to eat at a Malaysian restaurant with my aunt and uncle. It was a great meal and we ended the night chatting over some drinks. We stayed up later than we planned to, but it was fun and worth it.

Day 4: Jasper National Park

We woke up at early and were out of the house by 6 in the morning to try to claim a campsite at the first-come-first-serve campground that we wanted to stay at. We were stunned by the scenery driving through the park and it left a very good first impression on us. We even got a quick glimpse of some mountain goats! We arrived at the campground around 10am and there were fortunately a handful of available sites when we arrived so we chose the best one and set up camp.

We kept our plans light today. We drove to Mt. Edith Cavell and did a short trail along Glacier Point. It was absolutely stunning.

We stopped at a few landmark waterfalls on our way back to camp: Athabasca Falls and Sunwapta Falls. Both were nice, but we didn’t spend a lot of time at either place since we were pretty tired. We went back to camp, visited the lake near our campground, made dinner and a fire, and went to bed.

Day 5: Jasper National Park

We made time today to do a longer hike today, but first needed to get gas in town since it’d be another hour or so to our trailhead near Maligne Lake. We did the Opal Hills Loop, one of Jasper’s steepest hikes, and it took us around 3.5 hours roundtrip. The loop part of the trail doesn’t start until about a kilometer into the hike and we somehow missed it and ended up doing the trail clockwise, which is opposite of what we saw recommended on AllTrails.

At some point we reached the top, the highest point of the hike, and it opened up to this beautiful subalpine meadow. It was such a different view from what we’ve been seeing on our hikes so it was really nice to take in. The reason people recommend doing the hike counter-clockwise is to avoid the steep downhill section (going counter-clockwise means you are hiking up this section). It was rough on our knees but no more than some other hikes that we’ve done, and we were still glad that we didn’t have to climb up this part. We did completely miss the view of Maligne Lake, though. It wasn’t obvious to us that there was a separate path leading to a lookout and we were expecting views on the main trail itself.

After our hike, we drove into town for a post-hike ice cream cone. We ended our last night in Jasper sitting around the fire and stargazing. Up until this point, we haven’t been able to see stars because there’s been rain, clouds, or we’ve been too tired to stay up. Tonight it was worth it and below is a blurry picture to show it.

Tomorrow, we venture over to British Columbia and make our last time zone change of this road trip. We’ll be back in Pacific Time before we know it.