Edmonton - Where There's Smoke, There's Fire

After our two day Albertan national park road trip with Janice, we were back in Edmonton to visit with Peter and Ollie. Unfortunately it was a code purple air quality alert due to wildfires, and also a heat wave, so we couldn't do anything outside. We decided to visit the Muttart Conservatory, a series of glass pyramids with different plant biomes. It was closed for renovation when we visited Edmonton in 2020, and Peter hadn't visited yet. We considered taking the light rail, but decided against it due to the air quality and heat. The Conservatory was neat, and we enjoyed checking out all of the plants. There was a temporary exhibit about Egypt as well.

Cheerios snack for Ollie.

Merlin the wonder cat.

Yikes, look at that smoky air!

The glass pyramids rise above a landscaped park.

It was so hot they had trouble cooling the pyramids.

The special Egypt exhibit had papyrus and lotus flowers.

The arid biome.

Some nice flowers.

Peter and Paul.

The gardens around the pyramids.

Downtown through the haze.

We made a quick stop in downtown to get some bubble tea, then went back to Janice and Peter's place to hang out. That's when we discovered that our flight back to Atlanta, which was supposed to leave around midnight, was cancelled, likely due to the Crowdstrike failure. Delta was telling us we couldn't get back to Atlanta until Tuesday (three days later), but West Jet was able to connect us through Winnipeg, leaving the following evening. So, silver lining, extra time with our friends! We had some Vietnamese takeout for dinner and had a relaxing night.

The tallest building in Edmonton.

The bubble tea place had Atlanta on the screen.

Yummy dinner.

The next day, our bonus day, it was still hot and smoky, so we looked for another indoor activity. We decided on the TELUS world of science. This was a great museum, particularly the large exhibit on the people, animals, and geology of the Arctic region. There's a lot for kids, but more than enough to keep adults entertained as well. We assumed this was related to the Tellus Science Museum north of Atlanta, but noticed it was spelled different, and it turns out these are two completely separate science museums that just happen to have similar names. According to the website for the museum in Georgia, it's named for Tellus Mater, the Roman Goddess of Earth, also known as Terra. Meanwhile the museum in Edmonton is sponsored by Telus Communications, a Canadian company.

The TELUS museum.

Paul being a dinosaur.

Ollie doing his best to be an astronaut.

Who did it better?

The Arctic exhibit, which had a lot of interactive elements.

That afternoon we visited a park (but not for too long, since the air quality was still bad) and had some Colombian food before saying goodbye to our friends and heading back to the airport. We arrived in Winnipeg after 11pm, and went straight to a hotel that we had booked through the airline. That counts as an official visit, right? 😆  The next morning we were up early for our flight to Atlanta, finally landing about 32 hours later than we originally planned. 

Dinner of champions - airport takeaway food at a the Hilton airport hotel at 11:30pm.

Lots of wildfire smoke in Winnipeg too - this was our view of the sun from the airport.

It will likely be a while before we return to Edmonton, as our friends are moving! Stay tuned for a surprise future adventure when we visit them in their new home.