Reading Week Adventures

            This past week was Reading Week here at the University of Calgary. A few of my friends and I rented a car and drove 8+ hours north to Fort McMurray, AB. We went mostly to catch the Northern Lights and ended up checking out the Oil Sand Fields J Alberta is the second largest producer of oil in the world, second only to Saudi Arabia, and Ft. McMurray is located right in the heart of the oil sand fields where Bitumen is harvested from the sand. We spent part of a day at the Oil Sand Discovery Center and learned about how they harvest the Bitumen, how the oil fields were formed, and go to see some of the equipment used out in the fields. We also drove north of the city one night and got to see all the fields lite up and, because it was so cold, got to see all the steam and heat produced from the process.

Oil Fields picture courtesy of The Guardian, those trucks are 2+ tons and 2+ stories tall!

            Two of the nights we were in Ft. McMurray, we got to see the Northern Lights, which according to the locals is really lucky. The lights were not the strongest either night, and the second night was pretty cloudy, but still got to see the greens light up the sky!

Ft. McMurray reminded me a lot of Medford, WI…snow covered roads, wind chills and temps well below zero, and a strong shift based work force (so at least things were open 24/7). Only the work force was mostly at the oil fields. Everyone was super nice and I got to use the skills learned from life in the Midwest quite a bit…such as being totally fine with asking strangers for directions/tips, getting a vehicle unstuck (3 times), how to keep a vehicle running in -20°C weather, and getting from point A to point B with terrible road conditions.

On our way back from Ft. McMurray we stopped in Edmonton (Alberta’s Capital) for a night. We had dinner that night at The Craft, a restaurant that had over 100+ beers on tap…we had to get a sampler just to figure out what we wanted because there were so many options. 

The view from the end of the bar at Craft.

The next day we went to West Edmonton Mall. The mall is supposed to be the largest in North America, but I personally thought it was rather small and that Mall of America is bigger. I picked up a few post cards to send family back home and then we headed back to Calgary! 

There is an ice rink in the middle of the mall!

I’ve been working on assignments the last few days to round out Reading Week with some actual reading.