Jilted Jaunts - Day 9 (Edmonton > Vegreville > Edmonton)

Friday, Jul 03 2026 (Day 9)

This Pysanka Festival, dear my-old-self-from-one-year-ago who posted at the bottom of Jilted Jaunts Day 8 wondering which out-of-city Canadian festival I'd go to next!

So after a time leap of about a year since the last Jilted Jaunts trip within Canada but outside of Edmonton, this fine Friday morning in July 2026 found me on a Flixbus headed out of the city. What? Why? Well, as background, I had been feeling down recently, and as a way to try to break my funk, I had been musing about taking some work nomad vacations around the province, like going to a small town and checking in to a motel there, then doing my work on a laptop from there while also taking some time out of my day to explore the town. And collect ephemera to bring home and scan.

I knew that I would need to take shuttle bus services to do something like this though, since I do not drive, but while those buses do exist for some of our smaller communities around the province, they usually run like once a day or once every two days, creating a dynamic where if I wanted to go to a town to explore it, I'd have to also commit to staying overnight there for a day or two.

While this whole idea might never happen, I did have a couple of days off this week between Canada Day on Wednesday and the ensuing weekend, and while I was doing some cursory research on Wednesday and Thursday, I found an interesting route. This route, served by both Flixbus and Rider Express, involved a town named Vegreville, an hour east of the city along Highway 16 (aka the Yellowhead Highway, and part of the Trans-Canada highway), which exited Edmonton on its northeast side. A late morning shuttle bus ride was available to take me there right from Southgate Station near my apartment, and there was a late afternoon return trip bus ride back as well.

In addition, I learnt it happened to have a big Ukrainian festival going on on this weekend, starting on Friday, and that it also had a library and visitor information centre/gift shop that I might possibly be able to loot while there too. And because it was on a Friday, I wouldn't have to feel bad about cancelling an afternoon anime session with Satinel and Nak since Friday was one of our off days.

So well, why not? Honestly, there were a couple of points against it. The first was that when I was first originally contemplating the possibility of doing this trip, I had planned this to be a Friday and Saturday trip, with me staying at a motel overnight and working on my blog on a laptop there to pass the time. This would give me two very relaxed half-days to explore the town. However, while the bus routes were willing, the motels were not, as due to the festival in town I found out that there were no vacancies at all for Friday night on Google Hotels and Trip.com (and no Vegreville properties listed at all on Booking.com).

Secondly, when looking at Vegreville's weather, it looked like they had avoided the flooding from the recent storms in late June that other Albertan towns had been hit with, but it looked like there was a thunderstorm scheduled for Friday afternoon and parts of Saturday as well. It's one thing to bring an umbrella for rain, but another thing altogether to be in a small Alberta town under the wide prairie skies during a thunderstorm. So, eh. Even as of Thursday afternoon, I was leaning towards not going at all.

However, Friday's weather forecast for Vegreville was amended on Thursday evening to remove all mention of the thunderstorm (though there was still a good chance of one on Saturday), and just a 35% chance of rain or so around noon, and next to nothing after that. In addition, without a storm slowing me down, my itinerary was possible to do in a four hour period or so, which was how much time I had between the outbound and return buses, and that would mean that I would still be able to sleep in my bed at night instead of in a random murder motel. And a nice day trip might be just the thing to cure my recent funk. So again, why not?

I still hemmed and hawwed a fair bunch before pulling the trigger, noting that half of my four hours would be spent walking because the bus pick up and drop off point was on the northwest side of town while the festival and tourist centre were on the southeast side, and there were supposedly a fair few mosquitoes around due to all the rain recently. I even polled Gemini, giving it my itinerary and asking it to look for gotchas (it turned out to mostly be worried about the time and about a segment where there was no pavement and I'd have to walk along the road shoulder). But at the end, literally about an hour before the Flixbus was scheduled to leave, and after I had let the checkout screen's countdown timer expire twice due to uncertainty, I decided to go for it. Why not indeed. Zao gia.

The two-way ticket cost me $49.33 in all, and this included a seat selection fee for both legs on the journey so that I could try to get a window seat away from the sun and pick a seat with no passengers seated next to me. I could pay extra to *guarantee* no one could sit next to me, which is interesting, but I didn't go that far, and thankfully still ended up getting a double seat to myself on both legs of the trip. This Edmonton to Vegreville trip was a short portion of a longer Edmonton to Saskatoon bus route though, I believe, and I also believe that Rider Express also ran the same route, Flixbus just happened to be cheaper and left earlier in the morning and returned a little later in the evening, giving me a bit more overall time at Vegreville. Plus I saved on a service fee by booking both trips as a single round-trip ticket.

The Pysanka Festival that I was going to attend did not itself have an entrance fee, although there was some part of it that did, according to its website (local). I only had about an hour to 90 minutes to spend there though, so I was never going to see everything anyway. I bought my tickets, and then stuffed Tigey, my phone, my insect repellent bottle (even though the layer I had inexpertly applied was supposed to last for 12 hours anyway), my Surface Pro rigid cardboard box (sans laptop -- its purpose was to hold ephemera and prevent it from bending), a portable Anker power bank, a bottle of water, some tote bags, some hand wipes, and my purse into my sling bag. And with my day's supplies packed, off I went!

I reached and boarded the outbound bus with about ten minutes to spare. For some reason the bus was a regular white tour bus instead of a Flixbus-branded green one, so I wasn't sure if it was the right bus to begin with, but it was, and soon enough we were on our way. The bus schedule looked something like this.

Edmonton (Southgate Transit Centre) -- 10:45 am
Edmonton (Jasper Avenue) -- 11:15 am
Edmonton (Belvedere Transit Centre) -- 11:45 am
Vegreville (Fas Gas Station) -- 12:45 pm.

In actuality, it went like this:

Left Southgate Transit Centre at 10:45 am.
Arrived at Jasper Avenue at 11:03 am.
Left Jasper Avenue at 11:17 am.
Arrived at Belvedere Transit Centre at 11:40 am.
Left Belvedere Transit Centre at 11:48 am.
Arrived at Vegreville (Fas Gas Station) at 12:48 pm.

And just so all the time-related data is in one place, my return trip schedule was as follows.

Vegreville (Fas Gas Station) -- 5:00 pm.
Edmonton (Belvedere Transit Centre) -- 6:00 pm.
Edmonton (Jasper Avenue) -- 6:30 pm.
Edmonton (Southgate Transit Centre) -- 7:00 pm.

In actuality, it went like this:

Left Vegreville (Fas Gas Station) at 5:07 pm.
Arrived at Belvedere Transit Centre at 6:10 pm.
Left Belvedere Transit Centre at 6:15 pm.
Arrived at Jasper Avenue at 6:39 pm.
Left Jasper Avenue at 6:44 pm.
Arrived at Southgate Transit Centre at 6:57 pm.

My walking route, as planned out on Google Maps below, took me from the northwest end of town to the southeast end, and back. I more or less followed this path (original link here), with some slight deviations, mostly around the Social Centre where the Pysanka Festival was being held.

I learnt one important thing during research, that there were walking pavements from the Fas Gas station all the way through town, but that there were no pavements from that vertical 47th Street all the way to Pysanka Park where the Vegreville Visitor Information Centre and a monument that I wanted to go see was. Nor was there a path to the Lady of the Highway shrine a little further on, just outside the southeast edge of town, that I had also planned to swing by. To mitigate this, I always made sure I walked that part of the route on the side shoulder of the road facing incoming traffic, never with it behind me. There weren't a ton of vehicles going by at any one time though, and it was easy enough to jaywalk across the highway at any point as needed as well.

I also learnt one important thing by actually putting my shoes on the ground and walking the path. I knew that there were going to be mosquitoes everywhere, thus I had put on quite some bug repellent before even boarding the bus, but what I actually found was that there were TONS of mosquitoes on the eastern and western edges of town, specifically west of the vertical 60 Street and east of the vertical 47 Street, but there weren't actually many in between those two streets (where most of the residential buildings were located) at all. I was surprised by that dualism. It was easily like a 75% reduction of mosquitoes between the two disparate areas. I'm glad to report that I did not seem to suffer a single mosquito bite throughout the entire day though. Kudos to my insect repellent, which I apparently picked up on May 21 last year, but did not name until Jilted Jaunts Day 8. I will do it now again, because just like before, I didn't get a single bite after using it even in hostile territory. It's this Piactive aerosol spray (local). It's deet-free as well! And supposedly works for 12 hours!

(I also learnt that no one in Vegreville plays Pikmin Bloom, and I basically had the run of all the mushrooms in town for myself for the entire day.)

I had also drafted up an itinerary with Gemini to figure out walk times and found that I had about a 40 minute buffer of additional time to spend at the four locations that I was going to visit, above and beyond the estimated allocated time that I had given each one. It turned out that my predictions were pretty on point though, and I left the last location and started my walk back to the gas station with about 30 extra minutes to go on top of the allocated time for walking there. So it turned out that the 4 hours and 15 minutes or so that I had given myself for my afternoon in Vegreville was plenty to hit everything I wanted to.

Enough wall of text, time for some pictures!

This is what the bus disembarkation area (and the non-branded Flixbus) looked like:

There were only three people that disembarked the bus here -- those two women in the first picture, and me. Neither one of those came to the festival too, one of them left somewhere else right away and the other one turned south on Mosquito Alley -- I mean 60 St. We parted with a smile to each other, and I never saw either of them again.

Here's a gallery of pictures from my walk to the southeast along 50 Ave, which ran across the entire length of the town.

One thing I noticed from this phase of the walk is that even though I couldn't find any vacancies online, at least three of the inns and motels I passed along the way still very much had vacancies -- Vista Motel in the gallery here still clearly has a neon sign saying so, and I have a picture from my return trip showing Wild Rose Inn with the same thing. Which is a little weird, since both of them are on Google Hotels and showed no vacancy as late as this morning still. I guess they hold some rooms back for walk-ins/drive-bys?

Once I reached the other Mosquito Alley, 47 St, the pavement ended as Vegreville's 50 Ave turned into a highway leading out of town, and this was the sort of highway shoulder that I was walking along at that point:

It was only a few minutes of non-pavement walking though, and the highway crossed a stream called the Vermilion River... no, it's a stream at this point.

Past the stream, a side road split north and west and led to the southeastern Vegreville sign (the northwestern one was featured in the gallery above):

And to the right of that was Elks/Kiinsmen Park:

Astute eyes would have seen this structure in a few of the above photos already, but inside the park was this giant thing:

Very neat. This is a pysanka, or Ukrainian easter egg, which I guess is why this park is also known as Pysanka Park, and why the nearby festival is known as the Pysanka Festival. It's the biggest pysanka structure in the world. One of many "World's biggest <random thing>" attractions in a small town, and I love that sort of thing. There was also this historical statue, but honestly, it's probably not what people specifically come here to see.

The other thing in the park was the Visitor Information Centre, and this one I WAS specifically here for. There was also this poster on the wall, for an event that I had read about (local) while researching road trips earlier in the week.

It was basically a stamp rally, but not one I could do. I was glad to see it though, as a regional promotion involving many towns. Cool stuff! The Info Centre itself was just a small single room, with an ice cream vendor on the right side and a gift shop on the left, but I ignored all that and beelined right to this.

Eee! There were lots of glossy touristy guides I ignored, as they're generic promotional stuff for larger and more famous places, but I went for most of the food and menu lists in the left shelf, plus a bunch of brochures promoting nearby museums and towns that were even smaller than Vegreville from the other two. There's never enough time to take everything, and always things left behind that I mildly wish that I took afterwards, but both space and time are limited after all. It does kind of feel like I'm playing Shop 'til You Drop or Supermarket Sweep. Take what I think has the most ephemeral, material, or sociological value, within a limited amount of time! I do use a pre-trained Gemini for this part though, if I have the time, and I did here, so I think I walked out with a pretty good haul.

I didn't buy any ice cream, nor did I purchase anything from the gift shop, even though they had a program guide for the Pysanka Festival on sale for $10. They said that it was also on sale at the festtival itself, so I wanted to buy it from there instead. But before the festival, there was one more thing a little further outside the edge of the town that I wanted to visit.

This thing was a shrine called Our Lady of the Highway, and it was located in a small hedge garden with an opened blue gate sitting right by the highway. The highway shoulder road at this point was wider too, and mosquitoes were everywhere.

The gate of the shrine looked like this:

And the shrine itself:

And plaque:

But I hurried away after taking that picture -- the mosquitoes in here were particularly small, and I did not want to be a sacrifice to the goddess, so out of the garden and back into the town I went.

My next stop was finally the Pysanka Festival itself, and this took place near the Vegreville Social Centre. It was spread over something like six or seven different buildings and outdoor areas in that general vicinity though, and frankly kind of annoying to travel around between, since even though the mosquito density here was lower, there were still a good number of them. Thankfully, the first building I went into also happened to be the Multiplex building where everyone else -- and the beer garden -- was apparently hiding out, and the opening ceremony was apparently happening here too when I arrived. I got to see more people here than I saw in Vegreville in the ENTIRE rest of my trip, COMBINED, in one place.

But I didn't stay long, since I was on a timer and I still needed to find food. I did buy the $10 program guide here to bring home to scan though, and also because it had the festival map which told me where the food area was.

Before that though, next to this building was an outdoor farmer's market, so that seemed like a good thing to check out.

...

This... this farmer's market had six stalls. Six. Plus a cool music tent enchantingly serenading a few people who were also introverted enough to not enjoy being in that Multiplex building for the opening ceremony.

That part was cool. But really? A farmer's market with 6 tents? This is why I worry about making a weekly or biweekly farmers' market my anchor for visiting a small town somewhere.

Oh well. I'm sure the food area will redeem this portion of the festival. That one was across a field and in the shadow of a stadium thing named Grandstand though, and on the way there, I got distracted by the building next to it, the one marked Folk Arts on the map. This was a cool building, with lots of, well, arts and crafts related tables.

I liked that series of historic pioneer church photographs in particular, but there was lots of impressive stuff here. I chatted briefly with the guy at the table right by the entrance, the one seated next to the two mannequins in the second picture in the gallery above, and signed Tigey's name into his guestbook.

But my stomach was complaining at this point as I had skipped breakfast earlier to be able to catch the bus due to my indecision as well, so I soon left that building behind and went to look at the food area on the map that was marked with the big blue fork and spoon symbol. There were several signs throughout the fairgrounds that pointed people to that area too, so it must be pretty good! Oh boy oh boy. Edmonton's UFest event a few weeks ago had severel great stores and lots of long queues in front of them, but since everyone was still stuck in the opening ceremony building, I probably had the run of the stalls and food trucks to myself! I wondered what amazing options I'd have.

...

Really. This... this food area had six food trucks. Six. And that wouldn't have been so bad if they sold real food, but two of them were selling lemonade, one was selling donuts, one was selling mac and cheese, one was selling baked potatoes, and one selling burgers and other things. Only the last truck really seemed like an option for "real" food here in my books.

There were two other little food icons on the map, and I had gone past the one in the beer gardens on my way out of the Multiplex earlier so I knew that it was a perogy truck, but I expected another store here selling perogies, maybe one selling Ukrainian sausages and cabbages and so far, but nooo. It's hard to take a festival seriously when their food area sucked so bad. In comparison, here was Edmonton's Ukrainian Festival (UFest)'s food lineup (local) from earlier this year.

Anyway, in the end, I ordered some fries ("precious loaded potatoes") from that Lord of the Grills truck, and it was pretty nice. There was a large grass field in front of the trucks but they had only put down five or six tables there for people to sit at, but since most of the people were still watching the opening ceremony, and since most of the trucks were not actually selling real food that involved sitting down and eating anyway, most of the tables were devoid of anything larger than a mosquito, and I swatted those away as I settled down at one to eat my meal.

I had just one more hall to visit after I was done my food, which was the the Yarmarok Marketplace in the top left of the map. There was a small strip of outdoor vendors that I had to walk by on the way in, and I pitied them for having to sit out with the mosquitoes. I guess they applied too late to get an indoor stall? Or they lose a wager or lottery or something?

Across from them sat Old MacDonald's Barn, a nice-looking shed with a giant business card over its door.

And past both of those was a large arena building hosting the indoor component of the Yarmarok Markjetplace.

Unlike the disappointing food and farmers' market areas, this was a good craft fair, easily on par with or better than many of those back in Edmonton, including the UFest one, although that pysanka sculpture showcase seems to have been recycled from the previous year. I did a walk around here, picking up a bunch of brochures and also spending a bit of money here on souvenirs. Specifically, I picked up two music CDs from the official event booth listed in the second picture above, and I was also hoping to get a T-shirt, but all the ones that I found were not only $35 (and cash-only), but also were generic Pysanka Festival shirts that did not list the event year. Generally, no listed year on an event T-shirt means no purchase for me, although the inverse isn't always true either. I also picked up a small plushie from the booth featured in the fourth picture above, and that guy will be featured in this week's Plushie of the Week.

This marketplace concluded my time here at the Pysanka Festival. I still had just under an hour and a half before my return bus arrived, and that was only about a 35-minute walk away, so I knew at this point that I was far ahead of my "worst-case scenario" and had time to kill. Not far from the event grounds was the local library, and that was the last stop on my itinerary that I would have had to give up if I was low on remaining time at this point. But since I wasn't, I jaunted over there and poked my head in.

Inside the building, but outside the library proper, there was a hallway plasted with community notices. They interest me a lot these days, and are something that I'll capture pictures of to preserve for the future if I have the time and opportunity to do so, so here are the various community notices and ads that were up today.

There was also a brochure table, and it really doesn't need mentioning by this point that this was my real goal here.

Yoink, mine. The library itself was very cozy-looking though, and I did a loop around the outside of the shelves, around the sides of the room. I did take a couple of the hanging folders from the free box in the last picture below to help organize the papers I had picked up in my bag,

I started to make my way back towards the Fas Gas station and my return bus to Edmonton after this, but since I was still so far ahead of schedule, I was looking out for places to pop into and spend some of that banked time on the way there. To that end, this motel (and its Vacancy sign!) called Wild Rose Inn that I was passing by caught my eye.

Why? Well, I figured they'd have something like this, and they did.

The receptionist looked up quizzically at me as I came into the motel foyer, but I said that I was just here to look over the brochure rack, and she nodded, as though that was something that happened every day. Maybe it is, from people who come here to leave brochures here or something, I don't know for sure. But I do know that a lot of the pamphlets and brochures here were very old, months or even years old in some cases, so this was like looking through a time capsule of flyers.

I liberated a few of them to bring home, but the real treasure here was hidden behind the Pizza Hut flyer on the right side of the second row. There were little booklets hidden behind that for some reason, and they turned out to be... old cookbooks? Or at least food... preparation books?

Two of them don't have dates from a cursory look at the covers, the third one dates from the 1960s, and the fourth one is missing its first and last ten pages or so. I don't even know what the title of that book is. They look like books that I would find at a flea market or antiques market. What were they doing on a motel's brochure rack? Who knows, but they're all going to be gleefully scanned and uploaded at some point now.

Leaving the motel, I continued my northwest trek and soon arrived at the bus pickup area. There was a Canadian Tire nearby, and I popped in there to pick up a physical Triangle Rewards card as I did not have one yet since setting up an account when I bought my humidifier two months ago. I then went to stand around in the parking lot until the bus came, a couple of minutes late, which just gave me more time to take pictures of the fluffy clouds going by.

Although there was a dark cloud or two floating by, and there was a very slight drizzle when I first arrived in Vegreville, the weather had held up just fine throughout my outing and that persisted all the way until I reached home, despite my phone's persistent warnings that there was a chance of thunderstorms in the area. I napped a bit on the bus, waking up only once we were back in the city, and despite the bus arriving late we still arrived back at Southgate slightly ahead of schedule. I was craving a cold glass or two of milk at this point, so I popped into the Safeway attached to the mall before crawling the rest of the way home. After about 19,000 steps or so in the day and a lot of bus time to boot, I could finally flop over in my bed. Home sweet home!