My weekend out in Edmonton

I have spent most of this week in Edmonton in business meetings, so now it's time for me to get out and see what's around. My first stop is the Lois Hole Centennial Provincial Park. Well, this is a nice, calm, relaxing park after a very hectic week. Lots of bird calls you can hear. Some places are just super quiet, so yeah, definitely a nice place to just come for a walk. Time for some dinner now, and my lettuce from home that I picked just before I left is still nice and fresh. That just goes to show you, the stuff that you buy in the grocery store has been picked a long time before it gets there. So today I was told that Elk Island National Park is a really cool spot, so I'm going to go close to there and try and find a parking spot. I checked their camping availability, and of course, since it's a long weekend, no chance. But I might be able to park overnight somewhere nearby and then check it out during the day, so I'm going to give that a shot. Found a nice little place to park here. It's called the North Cooking Lake Natural Area. Yeah, that's it. Seems pretty safe. It is right beside the highway, so it might be a little bit noisy. There's another van here, so you know, that's usually a good sign. I definitely think it'll be an all right place for a night. So yeah, the train is somewhat close. Well, good morning. I've got a bunch more meetings today, but thankfully they are all virtual, so I can take them online. So I'm going to go to Elk Island National Park and check that out and have some meetings in a beautiful setting. And here I am. So I've already seen some bison or buffalo from the highway. Is there a difference between bison and buffalo? I don't know. But anyways, I'm excited to hopefully see some more wildlife. All right, this is where I plan to set up, at least for the morning. Looks pretty decent. Got some friendly geese. Actually, probably they're unfriendly. Not a bad view overall. So I stayed the night near Elk Island National Park again, and now I'm in a provincial park parking lot. I was hoping to do some hiking this morning, but it is just really wet and mosquito-y. So I actually think I'm going to pack things up and head back into Edmonton and check out the riverfront there. I just picked up some coconut husk for our composting toilet, and I was thinking to myself, you know what, the weather's still not that great, maybe this would be a good time to do some laundry. So I'm going to find a laundromat somewhere around here. And of course, make some oatmeal while the laundry's in. Got to make the most efficient use of time. So you've really got to watch when you do oatmeal in this thing. I checked it at 10 minutes and it didn't look like it was quite done, but at 12 minutes it was boiling over. So I think maybe 10 minutes and then leave it on keep warm or something like that. Well, I've just arrived downtown by the river. The first parking lot I had scouted out was closed, but I found one here at like a rec center, and the weather's starting to look nicer too. So I was wondering if there was going to be a part of the river that was pretty slow and maybe I could go paddleboarding on, but I think I have my answer. That looks like it's flowing pretty quick. So one thing you should know about Edmonton in the spring is the mosquitoes are pretty bad, even here downtown. But I was able to get up on top of a hill and get a pretty good view. That's downtown behind me and the capitol building or the Alberta legislator. Capital, you say? Yes, Edmonton is actually the capital of Alberta, not Calgary. Go figure. Figured it might be nice to go for another little hike. This morning I've come back to Elk Island National Park because last time I was here I was very disappointed that I couldn't paddleboard because a huge thunderstorm kind of interrupted that. So today the weather's supposed to be beautiful, so I'm hoping to get out on the water. So it's looking like this might be a bust again. It's actually really, really windy. That's one thing I didn't check carefully in the forecast. Whoops. There's a guy kayaking out there so I maybe could do it in kayak mode but yeah it's not great. And honestly the water looks a bit gungy too. It's certainly a lot nicer in the trees here where it's a bit sheltered from that wind. Well even without the paddleboarding this is a really nice park and they've got a ton of hikes so I think I might try and do a couple of those. On this walk I've started to think a little bit about the paddleboard situation and I think I'm gonna go. However I'm going to put it into kayak mode. There's a little seat that you can put on that basically turns the paddleboard into a kayak and then you can switch the paddle around to make it a kayak paddle. So I think it'll be good to actually test out the capabilities because we're going to be places where it's going to be windy, it's going to be ocean, and I'm still going to want to go out. So let's put it to the test. Plus there's a bunch of little islands and coves that I think could give some protection so yeah gonna give it a shot. Well this dock is pretty high up but I still think it's the best way to get in. Actually maybe not. I don't know. Maybe I will try this. Okay couldn't film during that first part. It was just crazy waves and I was paddling like crazy but now I'm behind a little island and it's beautiful and calm. So one thing I forgot was to actually put in my little uh what do you call them the little fins to keep me going straight. So I was kind of paddling like this in the waves too. So I'll use this little dock behind me to go and put those fins in. Yeah that'll be helpful. When I put these in my little orange backpack I figured oh they're in the back right so I'll feel them and I'll remember. I didn't. All right got my fins on now. That's a big improvement. And this little cove that I'm going into now is just like calm and glassy. You'd hardly know there was any wind. You can see the water is pretty mucky though. There was a warning about blue green algae which you know can definitely be toxic sometimes. So I'm going to take all the precautions rinsing everything off, taking a shower, washing my hands. But you know what that means. Even though I actually remembered to bring a snack this time I'm not going to be able to eat it because I've got to wash my hands first and I didn't bring anything that can actually like sanitize my hands. There is just something out there preventing me from eating snacks which I guess maybe is good health-wise. I found myself another quiet little cove. Lots of algae. You can kind of see this is the transition to the to the really windy part and I've got to go through that to get back to the dock to do the rinse off and everything. So here we go. All right, made it back to dry land. Decided to come up on shore here. Seemed a lot easier. All right I'm going to try rinsing off here. Don't know how well it'll actually work. I feel like that actually worked pretty well. Well I'm really glad I was able to go out for that paddle. It was pretty intense at points with the wind and waves but you know some nice calm areas too. Anyways I don't think I'll be going out again today. Not because of the wind but just because of the cleanup from the algae. I mean it's great that they had that little shower but oh it takes forever to get it all off and then you've got to wash up really well. But anyways glad I was able to do it but I think that's it for paddle boarding today. Kind of took over an area to dry my stuff quickly. Just wasn't drying fast enough in the van. Still really busy even with the wind. Well I've done a little over 14,000 steps today. Feeling a little bit tired. A lot of paddling too so got my exercise at least. But starting to get a little on in the day. Everybody's barbecuing. It smells amazing. It's making me hungry. So I think I'm going to leave you here and have some dinner and then I've got to prep for a whole new week of meetings here in Edmonton. So next week I'm going to be heading back to Hope so we can get back to our regular adventures with Mel and Benny. So I will see you next week. Well even without the paddle bar... the barding? You can kind of see this is the transit. But I think that's it for paddling board. Well I've... Make sure you don't miss the next video by liking, subscribing, and turning on notifications. Oh and don't forget to check out our website and sign up for our weekly email blast. Thanks for joining us and we'll see you in the next one.