Province of Alberta Restaurants

On our July, 2006 trip, as part of our desire to see different scenery when we have to make more than one trip between places, we were returning to Calgary from Cold Lake via the network of secondary highways that cover most of southern Alberta. These roads almost always run north-south or east-west with very few going in diagonal directions but they are paved, smooth, have little or no traffic and a speed limit of 100 kph (60 mph). One thing I tend to forget when doing this is that, in the vast spaces of the west, gasoline stations and restaurants are much more difficult to come by than they are in the crowded (relatively speaking) areas of eastern Canada!

Lunchtime was approaching and we could spot no sign of any restaurants as we passed through village after village. Finally, when we reached the intersection of our back-road and the major Yellowhead Highway section of the Trans-Canada Highway we found ourselves in the village of Mannville. Surely, I thought, there will be some choices here on a major cross-Canada route. Wrong, the only thing we could see was a rather decrepit-looking structure that did not even have an obvious entrance-way!

Nothing else was in sight, and we had delayed our decision long enough that it was now past noon as we entered the dining room, the walls of which were decorated with various ice-hockey sweaters. It must have been the ladies club day, because several of the tables were taken by groups of elderly ladies and most of the others by an assortment of customers. We checked the menu and placed a take-out order of two simple toasted whole wheat Ham, Cheese & Tomato sandwiches (US$4 each) to go with our bottles of water. Trouble was, they had a number of orders to fill before ours so, we sat down and waited, and waited and waited. Finally, the waitress came out with one of the sandwiches - sheepishly saying they had dropped the other one on the floor and were making another for us. We shared the one sandwich that had been delivered while we waited, and it was good. Finally the other one appeared and we were told that there would be no charge because we had waited so long for our 'take-out' order. I thought that was nice of them, so I met them half-way and paid for one. Later on, we almost ran out of gas near Drumheller before we coasted into a small-town gas station on our last fumes (this was after I had driven by a couple of stations earlier thinking that I could always find something!).

Province of Alberta Restaurants

Visiting Province of Alberta?

Visiting Province of Alberta?