Walking Along the North Saskatchewan River

July 23 , 2008

After returning from Elk Island National Park, we took a trip to the West Edmonton Mall because Brenda wanted to see it. It is reputedly the second largest mall in the world and contained three amusement parks as well as a bewildering array of hundreds of shops. Brenda poked around a bit while Rod read. The only thing we bought was a cup of coffee at McDonalds and some ice cream from Baskin Robbins.

Getting to the Mall required navigating north across the North Saskatchewan River and then down on the west side of the river as it curved south. On the way back we crossed the highrise bridge to get back to the University of Alberta campus, and we say a lot of people walking and biking across the bridge. We decided to walk across it, but spent 20 minutes trying to find a parking place on the campus or near the river without success. So we went back to our hotel to park and walked from there.

We walked north from there and got on the bicycle/pedestrian trail along the river and eventually made our way around to the lower rail bridge across the North Saskatchewan River. It had a bicyle/pedestrian bridge swung underneath it, so we walked across it and up the long stairway up the high bank on the north side. We then walked back across the high bridge and back to the hotel. It was a long walk, but the weather was beautiful and we enjoyed seeing the river and the bridges from all those different viewpoints. There were lots of young people out running or biking and there was a nice relaxed atmosphere around the area.