August 28, 2025
After having visited Waterton Lakes National Park yesterday I had returned to my Airbnb in Lethbridge to spend my first night here. Lethbridge is the 4th largest town in Alberta province with a population of just over 100,000. People who live here are called Lethbridgians or, are you ready for this, Lethbians.
Today first place I went was the Paradise Canyon Golf Course, as it was listed on TripAdvisor as being a good place for photo ops. Well, it is in a nice canyon but it is a golf course (duh) so I didn’t spend much time there.
Running alongside it, in this long coulee, is the Oldman River which you will hear more about in a moment.
My next stop was the Nikka Yuko Japanese Garden, which I had passed as I was driving into town yesterday.
No, that’s not a Japanese Darth Vader. It is authentic samurai armor.
After that I drove to the Helen Schuler Nature Centre. I was greeted by this sign:
Oki is an indigenous Blackfoot word meaning hello, or welcome.
Most of the displays in the Centre seemed to be targeted at kids, though there were numerous messages scattered about clearly directed at adults.
The building did have a rooftop deck which was promoted as having a variety of plants, but I can’t say as I was terribly impressed (they weren’t flowers so much as herbs and non-flowering plants). It did, however, give me a great view of another local landmark – the Lethbridge Viaduct, or as is called locally, the High Level Bridge. I had driven under it to get to the Nature Centre.
It was completed in 1909 by the Canada Pacific Railway and is the longest and highest railroad trestle in the world. It spans the Oldman River and reaches a maximum height of 314 feet. At 5,327 feet it is just over a mile long. It is still in use, and I did see a long train traveling over it later in the day.
I drove to a wetlands/nature preserve in another part of the coulee. I walked along a series of paths and on a pier-type walkway, hoping to see some critters but I did not. I then drove downtown as I had picked up a brochure touting a mural contest with some pretty clever entries, but it must have been dated as I only found one – painted on an electrical box in a big city park. The map I had showed lots more…
I got a little uncomfortable as there seemed to be lots of rough looking people hanging out in the park, and there was an obvious police presence, so I decided to go back to my Airbnb and do some trip planning. I had improvised visits to Medicine Hat and Castlegar (my next stop) but needed to look at my maps and plot out some more stops in British Columbia and Alberta and start planning my route to Alaska!
johnboystravelblog 