We headed towards Athabasca Canada on Thursday morning (Aug 8) so we could attend one of Darrell’s college friends wedding celebration. They had eloped last year and were celebrating twice this year. Once in California (where they live and where the bride if from) and once in Canada (where the groom is from). We knew more people at the California celebration, but Edward wasn’t even a month old and we weren’t ready for a trip like that yet so we decided to go to the Canada one.
It was quite a drive up there and took two days. We stopped at a lot of little cities along the way for feeding and letting Edward play. Thursday night was rough as we were hoping to make it all the way to Jasper, but we only made it to Blue River before Edward had a breakdown. He did so well until then but we had been in/out of a car for 12.5 hours already and we were hoping to make it another two. We tried to get a hotel in Blue River, but they were sold out, so we ended up driving to Valemount for a hotel which was another hour. Poor Edward ended up crying himself to sleep as when we got him out, there was no consoling him. The boob, rocking, clean diaper, toys, nothing was doing it. 🙁 I felt like a bad mommy. We found out the reason the hotels were sold out was because there happened to be a big festival in town that weekend, so we got one of the last rooms available in Valemount.
Luckily, Edward woke up his bright cheerful self in the morning and was ok in the car. We made sure to stop for an hour at a time to feed him, change him, and let him play/stretch before getting back on the road. We made it to Athabasca and stayed at the Groom’s family cabin with them. We had a lot of fun and everyone we met were really nice.
The wedding celebration was also during the Groom’s family reunion, so there were a lot of people. It was a blast! I did end up stuck in one general area because of Edward, but I made sure it was by the bar where most of the other people I had met the night before were hanging out at.
The trip home was pretty uneventful. We saw a Black bear walking along the highway, Edward slept most of the time in the car and woke up when we were close to where we were going to stop to feed him. The only small hitch was that when we were going through Jasper National Park, there was construction and we were stopped for almost half an hour. Edward started to wake up and get fussy right before they let us through. If we had sat for any longer, we would have needed to pull to the side to get him out of the car.
Overall it was a fun trip. Darrell wants to go back up to Jasper National Park to just spend some time as it was a beautiful park. We also might go back there sometime in the future. Maybe once Edward is a little bigger.