"Edmonton in Candada" Edmonton by ZanieOR

In the summer before he started his senior year of high school I asked my son, Matt, where he would like to go for a vacation, and he said Canada. (He'd only been there once before, when he was two for the Vancouver BC World's Fair in 1986.
Since he also wanted to do shopping for school clothes, we made our destination Edmonton, which has a mall that at least at one time was billed as the biggest mall in the world.
As far as I was concerned the trip we made in our 1985 Subaru was just an excuse to be on the road traveling and to spend time with my son, who was a good sport about still being willing to spend a whole week with no one but his mom.
We camped out a couple of nights on the way, and spent a night at Banff, BC., which made me realize that Joseph was a piker as far as being a tourist town compared to Banff.
Coming from a small town going to a big mall is like a kid going to a toy store, but I have to admit that after a while the mall began to pall. One of the funnest things was watching these bear cubs that had been rescued and were living and playing every day at the mall.
We really lucked out because the Edmonton Fringe Festival was on while we in town, and that was a lot of fun. It was basically several days of mostly off beat plays; since Matt was involved in theater in high school, he was probably more into plays than most kids his age.

• Pros:The Fringe Festival
• Cons:Too much time in the mall