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We continued west to east through Jasper that afternoon and saw three more bears, two moose, 6-8 caribou, and a couple herds of mountain sheep and mountain goats with babies. At one point we pulled over to photograph a herd of mountain goats. Although there were quite a few vehicles nearby when I pulled up on my bike the entire herd came charging at me. At first I was a bit worried, but when they got within 5-6 feet, they all stopped, looked us over, and started eating again. I can only assume they thought our bikes were distant relatives! Our day ended in Edmunton, Alberta.

Friday July 9

Once again, the weather turns nice. Our plans for the day were to spend it at the West Edmunton Mall (The World's Largest Shopping Mall and Parking Lot). We thought we would stop by Heritage Harley Davidson first and pick-up some more T-shirts. After getting all dressed and ready to leave, Lauren's new bike wouldn't start. I guess this would be a good time to mention Lauren got a 1996 Dyna Convertible the week before we left on our trip. We called AAA and they arrived within 10-15 minutes. Attempted to jumpstart the bike to no avail. We finally had to push start it. I had already called Heritage to let them know we were coming in with a problem. Mark, the parts man, who I spoke to on the phone, told me he would have a battery all ready for us when we got there, AND HE DID. Unfortunately, when Dave, the service manager, replaced the battery and did a charging system check on it, he discovered the problem was not the battery. All this was done in the first 20 minutes we were at the dealership. Dave informed me he could not check any further until 2:00 that afternoon, so we left both bikes there and grabbed a cab to the Mall.

West Edmunton Mall is INCREDIBLE!!

If you don't know about it, here are a few points. The mall is entirely enclosed and includes a full size water park, a large amusement park with roller coasters, 18 hole miniature golf course, full size ice skating rink, aquatic park with dolphins, 20 movie theaters, an IMAX theater, a casino, a very large go-cart track, over 200 stores, plus food from Hooters to MacDonalds. In the one day we were there, we probably saw about 25% of the mall. Of course, I spent a good part of my day keeping the girls out of the stores :-). I called Heritage at 4:00 as requested by Dave, and Lauren's bike was fixed. Bad ground connections. They even put our battery back in the bike. We decided to pick the bikes up the next morning. Dave said that would be fine and they would be locked up inside overnight. So we enjoyed the rest of our day at the mall and went back to our motel with no worries.

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