Our Trip to Canada

< June 14^th | Index | June 16^th >

June 15^th, 2008: Day 10

We woke up on June 15^th early enough to eat breakfast, so we ate our (by this time) customary bagel, cereal and fruit based breakfast; quite delicious most of the time. We decided to go to the West Edmonton Mall while Don and Ruth went house searching again, so we scurried to get ready early enough to have a decent amount of time to explore what was supposed to be one of the biggest malls in Canada.

We piled in the car not knowing that Don had put some meatloaf in the back for himself to eat without telling anyone, and I inadvertently tossed a pillow on top of it, thus causing what henceforth will be called the Meatloaf Incident. We ran inside with the meatloaf-stained pillow to clean it and put it in the washing machine, all the while Don thought Mandy was the one who put the pillow on his beloved food.

Once we were finally in the car again, we headed to the West Edmonton Mall. On the way, Don discovered that he had left his laptop’s AC adapter at the lodge, and said such obscene things as “Oh, that BITES, that BITES A THOUSAND TIMES” (See Julie’s movie week 2). Once he got over this fact, we were almost halfway there and it wasn’t long before we arrived and realized just how large the mall really is. We said our goodbyes and went in.”

We started by going into “The Source by Circuit City,” which used to be RadioShack until Circuit City bought them out. It had a mixture of RadioShack items and Circuit City items as one might expect from such a buyout.

We continued down the escalator to the first floor and found a camera shop, and I remembered that I wanted to buy myself a lens cap leash to prevent me from losing my lens cap again. I bought it for $6.

We walked further down the hall and found yet another camera store that had an identical lens cap leash for $2; needless to say, I bought it, too. Before we left, I spotted the LensBabies lens on the display shelf and asked if I could try it out. The guy behind the counter said sure, so I took some pictures with it, but because I was not familiar with the lens, none of them turned out particularly good; he offered to show me how it’s done, so I gave him my camera and he took the picture to the right.

After we looked at camera bags I went back to the other camera store and returned the unopened leash to get my money back and keep the cheaper price (a trick I learned from Julie).

We moved down the hall and found a little kiosk selling miniature clocks and trinkets (right)…

They even had one desingned for Liz… Maybe if she had this she would get to bed at a reasonable time.

Right behind this kiosk was a statue of some oil workers on an oil rig (right). We walked around the corner to discover something no one really expected; an amusement park inside the mall! There were carnival rides, roller coasters, video games, everything a proper amusement park should have, except this was all indoors.

We walked further into the depths of the mall and discovered the full-size skating rink with hockey court. There were many people skating, some of them who looked like they actually knew what they were doing.

Right outside the rim of the rink was a video game store, and inside was a helmet of Master Chief; this one is for Tim.

On the second floor, right next to a Tim Horton’s, is an aquarium with tropical fish.

Just as we were observing these fish, stores started randomly closing, and it wasn’t until then that we realized it was Sunday and the mall closed at 5:00 pm. People started leaving, so we decided to run to the food court, but not until after finding two more interesting subjects to photograph…

I ate a quick meal at A&W while Mandy got food at Mr. Sub and Julie got hers from Opa!. Once we had eaten we decided to leave the mall and wait for Don & Ruth to return from their searches. We were lucky that we weren’t alone in the parking lot; there were plenty of seagulls joining us as we waited what seemed like hours (but in reality was only about 1 hour). So what else was there to do, but to take photos of them?

When Don and Ruth finally arrived, Ruth jumped out of the car and hugged us because she was worried sick about us; they asked someone who was selling their house when the mall closed… they said “it’s Sunday” and Ruth didn’t even wait for her to finish her sentence before saying they had to go and pick us up (thank goodness they asked… they didn’t even have cell phones at that time!)

When we were all safely in the car again, we headed to a house that they wanted to look at in Stony Plain. When we arrived we had to have the seller’s daughter call her back to the house since we were a little late; once she was there, we began the tour. The house itself was not exactly impressive and didn’t have a garage, not to mention that the master bedroom was in the basement and was right next door to the laundry room!

What I did find interesting, however, were the pets at the house… They had an Australian Shepherd just like Ginger, and a cool cat.

We decided the house wasn’t for us so we bid our goodbyes and looked around the area for some more houses and found a few, though didn’t really look at them seriously. We headed back to the lodge after our long day and went quickly to bed.

< June 14^th | Index | June 16^th >