After the late night last night we are packed up and hit the road by 8am headed to Edmonton. It's only 180 miles if you go the direct route but numerous folks have told us that if your in this area one of the best bike rides you can take is the Icefield Highway (route 93) from Banff to Jasper. This route will be about 500 miles. So we get on the TCH heading west to Banff. I forgot to mention that since we left Regina, the prarrie has changed from flat to long gently rolling hills. Also the yellow topped plant that we didn't know what it was is Canola which is a very large crop out here. About 5 -8 miles out of Calgary in the distance you can see the snow covered Rockies in Banff which is about 60 miles away. Tom mentions that his clutch seems to have some slack all of a sudden and that when we stop for gas he'll adjust it. In Banff we stop for gas and are told that there's no services until you get to Jasper, 180 miles away, as the Icefield highway is within the Jasper National Forest which has a $3.90 US admission. We gas up, Tom adjusts his clutch and off we go. This is a 2 lane road with lots of cars/campers/RV's/bicycles/hikers etc. so you won't set any land speed records. The road winds up & down through the Rockies with some great scenery including glaciers hence the name Icefield highway. I'd be surprised if this road is open in the winter. There are turn outs along the way to take pics. We're heading up one pretty steep pass and there's a turn out with a great vantage point (see upper pic above) and through our CB's we decide we'll stop here. Tom comes back and says he'll meet us at the top! We stop for about 10 - 15 minutes and then continue up. We get up to the top and don't see Tom. As this road has no turns off of it we decide he must of kept going and we keep watching for him along the way at the turn outs but never see him. We continue on for another 60 - 70 miles and never see him all the while calling on the CB. As we cross out of the National Park just before Jasper there's Tom parked on the side of the road. He says that his clutch has slack again and he decided not to stop unless necessary. We are at about 178 miles on this tank of gas and we need gas which is just a few more miles up into Jasper. We fuel up and get lunch around 2:30. We have a little over 200 miles to get to Edmonton. At lunch Tom seems to think that he might have a throw out bearing issue rather then ordinary clutch adjustment as that hasn't worked. The good news is the intermittent power and chain issues he had seemed to be cured. We head for Edmonton via route 16 and the skies are not looking good. About 60 - 70 miles from Jasper we decide to pull over and get our rain gear on as there's some big dark clouds ahead. Perfect timing as it starts raining as we finish getting our gear on. It rained off & on til we got to Edmonton around 7:30 pm. We come into a stretch of hotels and pull in to get rooms. They laugh at us when they realize we don't have a reservation because there's a huge Triathlon and BMX events in town this weekend. We go to about 6 hotels and get the same story although a couple places mention there is 1 smoking room available. We call a place someone says will have a couple rooms and they do but are smoking rooms as well. We decide to bite the bullet cause it's still raining and getting later. We go there and these rooms were wreaking as if the people were still smoking in them, beds not made disgusting. We end up going back to the couple places that had 1 room and stayed in different places. We unload our bags, check in and get to our room and all of a sudden the skies open up with high winds, hail, thunder & lighting. Luckily we got off the road when we did. Tomorrows plan was to check out Edmonton and go the the worlds largest mall and then head north later in the day.
Sunday morning Tom & Mark open up Toms bike and find out the throw out bearing is toast. Of course it's Sunday and the Harley dealers here are closed. There's 2 dealers here so we hope they have the part which we are told is the same since 1984 so it should be in stock. It's a quick fix once we have the part and hope to be back on the road by mid morning. The weather today is showers off and on and we go to the mall for a while have lunch and come back in the rain. Stay tuned for the next part of our adventure.
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