It’s a long drive to Fort McMurray in Alberta. Fort McMurray is a boom town in the middle of the Athabasca oil sands. There were barely a thousand souls there in the 1950s but by the 1970s there were several thousand. The population doubled from 15,000 to 30,000 between 1976 and 1981. It doubled again to 60,000 by 2011. The 2021 municipal census says there are now 72,917 residents.

Google Maps says I should take US-97 as far as the Columbia River and then head east on I-84. From there it is north on I-90 to Spokane. Figure 600 miles for that leg of the trip.

From Spokane it is US-95 to the Canadian border where it becomes BC-95. From there you take AB-3 and AB-22 to Calgary and then AB-2 to Edmonton. That’s another 600 miles or so.

It’s a mere 450 km (whoops, I mean 280 miles!) north on AB-63 to Fort McMurray. The whole thing is not quite 1500 miles. That’s at least 24 hours of driving.

Do I want to drive to the Athabasca oil sands? Well, no. I’d like to go there, but I don’t want to drive. But other than airplanes and helicopters the only way to get to remote, northern Alberta is via automobile. Perhaps I can take a train to Calgary or Edmonton and get a ride from there!

I’m drawn to the Athabasca, in part, because of the oil sands. It’s one of the largest construction projects in the world. I feel like I have to see it. I can’t run my fingers across a plastic keyboard and not think about what it takes for that to be possible. It takes oil to make the plastics, for one. Extracting, processing, refining, shipping, and distributing all have to happen before consuming!

The oil sands project may be really big, but it is dwarfed by the vastness of the surrounding wilderness. I would very much like to see northern Alberta and Saskatchewan. And to continue northward to the Great Slave Lake and through the boreal forests and tundra of the Northwest Territories to Great Bear Lake and the MacKenzie River. It looks like magnificent country.