I just spent a week in the Veg for work, so for that reason it was worth visiting. Most other people I saw there were working or passing through on a Trans-Canada drive (from the looks of their licence plates and jam-packed full cars).

I now know where not to stay (Homesteader Inn, where non-smoking = smoking), where you can eat after 9pm (Dairy Queen, Subway, or Perry’s Pizza), and where to find a good game of dodgeball on a Tuesday night (the Centennial Hall).

I got to meet a lot of the local people and they were uniformly friendly and convivial. I would have fit in better had I been driving a domestic brand truck, but they overlooked that detail for the most part. I like to shop downtown in small towns because I see too many empty storefronts, with companies forced out of business due to the Wal-Martification of even our rural communities. Spend some money in a small town next time you pass through; it means more to them than it does to a giant corporation.

They put up the Christmas decorations while I was there, and I drove down the main street one evening in the fog. It looked very pretty.

Despite the fact that Vegreville is best known for its giant Easter Egg (pysanka), I only saw it in passing this time. It looks better with the benefit of distance anyway.

Perhaps more spectacular are the giant links of sausage in Mundare, about 16km west of Vegreville. Just the fact that someone would dedicate so much energy in creating a monument to sausage is a bit awe-inspiring. It looks pretty inedible, and it’s really just a free advertising ploy for the local meat packaging company, but it made me want to buy some sausages anyway. Mission accomplished. They stunk up my car on the drive home.