Day 1 (June 1): Calgary to Grande Prairie, with a stop in Edmonton to pick up Rosalie.

It's a trip I've done before, though in segments and some of it longer ago: the 300 kms from Calgary to Edmonton as familiar as the back of my hand, the roughly 450 kms from Edmonton to Grande Prairie last driven with Alan on our first holiday together back in 2000. And it's a trip I love - the vistas of land and sky that make the Alberta landscape.

The valley view at Valleyview, between Edmonton and Grande Prairie. At the tourist information booth I bought the 2012 edition of Milepost, "the" Bible for anyone driving north. Thanks Alane (intrepid northern traveller)! for the recommendation.

A previous post shows Rosalie and me eating ice cream in Whitecourt - well, here is the Burger Baron where we got it. Rosalie says that it's an important rural Alberta experience to have a soft ice cream from a Burger Baron - and she's right. Of course, Rosalie knows: she grew up in Neerlandia, one of the many smaller towns roughly north of Edmonton, and it has a Burger Baron!