June 6: Stampeding into Calgary

I couldn't leave Banff without taking the waters, but the hot mineral spring that provided the original draw for tourists has been closed for over 20 years because it contains a unique snail. Well, a lot of them, actually. We visited the Cave and Basin historic site yesterday morning on our tour to see the cave where the hot spring was discovered (by railroad workers) and the bathing pools. The smell was impressive. Why people actually wanted to immerse themselves and get their noses close to such a vile sulphur funk is a mystery to me. And if the snails, which are about the size of lemon seeds, were there then ... yuck. I'm sorry, I just don't get it.

No, the way to enjoy the Banff spa experience without gagging or getting icky protected snails in your bathing suit -- no longer a real threat, since you can't even put your hand in the water because it might upset the snails -- is to visit the modern public spring facility on Sulphur Mountain up near the gondola or, if you crave serious luxury, to spend a day dipping and soaking at the Fairmont's spa. They've got a whole complicated ritual mapped out, which I adapted to shorten the amount of time necessary and cut out most of the "cold plunge" parts. But they have whirlpools and waterfall pools of different temperatures, a sauna and steam room, a dreamy mineral pool with underwater music (!) and two special rooms just for sitting comfortably, drinking tea, staring out at the mountains and congratulating yourself on being able to be there.

When I was thoroughly waterlogged, I tore myself away to drive to Calgary, leaving the dramatic peaks of the Rockies behind me for more modest treed hills, then patches of flat that hint at the prairies ahead. Calgary is amazingly vibrant and growing despite having winter temperatures that reach something like -40 (F or C? -40 is the same on both scales!). It's the youngest city in Canada populationwise, with an average age of 35, and personal incomes run very high while unemployment runs very low. There is construction everywhere.

I got a literal overview of the city from the Calgary Tower, Calgary's version of the Space Needle or CN Tower. From the observation deck you can see all the way back to the last line of Rockies, or straight down into the street, thanks to sections of transparent flooring.

Very nearby is the elegant and fascinating Glenbow Museum. It's an eclectic mix of something for everybody: art, history, culture, including a wonderful exhibit about the memorable pioneer characters of Alberta's history, beautiful Asian/Indian art, and a splendid and intriguing cross-cultural, cross-temporal look at warriors and warrior culture. Suits of armor, kimonos, battle dress, guns, spears, war bonnets. Stuff from all over time and all over the world, cleverly organized for comparison and contrast.

Throughout the museum is a remarkable emphasis on First Nations (what Canada calls its native peoples) artifacts, art, culture and point of view. Exhibits dealing with the white settlement of Western Canada and the expansion of the railroads include the role native peoples played and their impressions, attitudes and reactions. Historical and art exhibits also have sections devoted to women. Like women warriors, representations of Indian/Asian goddesses, pioneer women, women in the armed forces. When you look around the images and portraits displayed at Glenbow, you see many kinds of faces and names. The cool part is that none of this comes across as contrived or preachy; it seems very natural, smoothly integrated and comprehensive.

Wow.

There were schoolkids there while I was -- the museum does a lot to engage and cater to kids -- and they actually seemed interested and attentive.

I started to stroll down the Stephen Avenue pedestrian mall, but the weather got ugly. Fortunately, it cleared up later when I met my friend George, who lives in Calgary, for dinner and a stroll around Prince's Island Park. I'm glad, because the park is truly a gem and it would have been a shame to miss it. Our evening amble also ratcheted up my critter count by two: We spotted, within seconds of each other, a snow hare and a rabbit. The hare startled me, because it was huge by bunny standards.

Tomorrow I take to the skies once again, bright and early. I can't wait to find out how domestic Canadian security compares with American!

Photo note: I dropped some pix from the train ride to Whistler into previous blogs. I'm catching up slowly but surely and hope you'll stay tuned!

June 5: Banff

This morning I woke up in what was once the staff quarters of the Banff Springs Hotel but is now a very fine newly renovated guest wing of the Fairmont Banff Springs with a FANTASTIC view of the Rockies outside my window. (They apparently built the hotel backward, giving the staff the best views.)

After a very fortifying trip to the breakfast buffet, I took a three-hour tour (a three-hour tour, "Gilligan's Island" fans) of Banff National Park, on which I saw an elk and several bighorn sheep and learned that, in the early days of the railroad resort that Banff was in its early days, they put up bleachers around the town dump and let folks come and watch the bears rummage through the trash. Also saw some beautiful lakes, one of which was dammed and flooded a little town you can now visit with scuba gear.

Had an outrageously good lunch at Bison Bistro and Deli (bacon and cheddar sandwich to die for -- real bacon, not that limp Canadian stuff) and then went on an hourlong horseback ride. For the first time since I can remember, I got a horse that was actually of an appropriate size for my short stature. I always felt like the outfitters would take one look at me and give me the most enormous horse in the stable, preferably one with deep-seated psychological problems. My horse was a little stubborn (I tried to steer now and then, then gave up), but he was of a manageable size and well-behaved. And the scenery -- it almost makes it more gorgeous and romantic to bob through it atop a horse. I even liked going back to the hotel smelling of horse and leather.


Couldn't resist a trip up the Banff Gondola, which takes 8 minutes to haul you up (closed car) to the top of a mountain from which you can see EVERYTHING and Banff looks like a tiny miniature Christmas village. Mountains, mountains everywhere, a double ribbon of highway, a blue milky lake, a snaking river (the Bow), and a thin atmosphere that made climbing the steps to the cosmic ray monitoring tower (I kid you not -- it's no longer in service) one of the colder exercises in heavy breathing anyone's ever likely to encounter. Did I mention it's cold? Did I mention the gondola took me far enough up to be on the same level with snow?



Anyway, if you look back a few posts now you'll see I'm beginning to be able to add in remedial pictures, thanks to some tech support back in Pittsburgh. Thank you, David. I'll be dropping in more of those as I can get them sized and get time to add them. All will soon be shipshape and Bristol fashion.

Did I mention there are a lot of Brits here?

June 4: Across the great divide

I have spent the past two days on a train. But not just any train. The Rocky Mountaineer is the most remarkable train I've ever been on, and I've done the TGV, the Bullet Train, the overnight train from Helsinki to Moscow (back when Moscow was in the USSR) and the R5 Paoli Local.

First let me assure you I've taken approximately 817 million pictures, because there is never a blah moment. If there ever threatens to be a blah moment, visually, on this train, you come out of the trees and suddenly there are mountains crowding around you begging to be photographed, a surging glacial torrent below, sun breaking through clouds to spotlight an alpine meadow, cows posing serenely and the threat of a random moose up ahead on the right. It's almost more than a person who has been told all her life that Pennsylvania has "mountains" can withstand.

So, yes, there will be pictures, and you will -- you WILL -- say wowwwww. That's what I said, and I wasn't even sure what I was looking at, thanks to a cocktail hour that begins at 10 a.m. I told you this was a great train.

But for now, as once again it's nearly midnight and I have to be up with the larks (though not the garbage trucks this time, which I appreciate), let me just paint you some pictures with words. AT LAST, THE PHOTOS ARE HERE! SOMEDAY, MY PRINTS WILL COME ...

Starting with a phrase not my own that was stuck in my head like a piece of spinach between teeth for the whole two days: "The mighty rivers of British Columbia." Hardcore Monty Python fans will recognize that from the preamble of the Lumberjack Song. The rivers of British Columbia are indeed mighty, especially when swollen to slick creaminess by snowmelt. We privileged travelers in the Gold Leaf service category and Gold Dome coach got excellent views of several rivers while sipping, dining and gazing out the overarching windows of our rail car. For fresh air and guaranteed glare-free photography, we could descend the spiral staircase to the dining level and step out onto the vestibule, where occasional rain and the scent of diesel didn't deter dogged photographers, videographers and wildlife spotters from crowding the railings and getting hands and hair in each other's shots.

It's funny how even in the most idyllic circumstances, little things can frustrate you. Like when the perfect pristine vista would open up, I'd aim my camera, start to squeeze the button and tall, lush hemlocks or lodgepole pines would come marching along the riverbank and right into my shot. "Damn you trees!" I barked more than once. "Down in front! Where are the loggers when you need them?"

I'm not proud of it.

The service and food on the Rocky Mountaineer are both outstanding, and I was blessed with a very pleasant and sympatico seatmate -- see previous post. Joff, a Kiwi from Christchurch who can rattle off the Monty Python "word association football" monologue and also goose a balky laptop, saved my butt more than once and let me have his window seat for most of Day 2. Of course, I pegged him as an Aussie at first, because the accent is so similar and our car was absolutely bursting with Aussies. (Aussies and Brits seem to have made up a majority of our fellow passengers.) But he forgave me for that and for beginning the conversation with "I'm from Pittsburgh, and yes, those were my boys winning in multiple overtime last night" (Canadians are very interested to hear where I live, thanks to the playoffs), to which Joff replied, "I have no idea what you're talking about," so I accused him of being Australian.

ANyway, yesterday we chugged through the chilly rainforest along the mighty rivers of British Columbia (MRBC), spotting bald eagles, some outlined against the sky as if posing for currency, until we got up onto the Thompson Plateau, where the terrain changes abruptly into kind of a high desert look. Badlands. Scrub. Few trees, lodgepoles, sagebrush. It looked like the American Southwest, and I can understand now why Westerns are filmed in Canada. You want miles and miles of John Wayne scenery with nary a cell phone tower or interstate in sight, you got it. But the changeover from the cold, damp evergreen forest to painted, sandy rock faces is so fast, it's like someone stitched together the edges of two completely different and unrelated climates. Even the air out on the vestibule was dramatically warmer and drier.


We saw a couple of bighorn sheep, who weren't interested.

When we rolled into Kamloops, we were met by two men and a woman in matching Western wear (red shirts, cowboy hats, horses) who stood in formation and waved at the train as it rolled in. Our onboard attendants Candice and Leah noted that these people turn out in full regalia and horsalia to greet every arriving train. I got a better look at them when we got off to go to our hotels for the night, and they were all wearing gold name badges, though I was too far away to read them.

The horses' gold name tags, however, were affixed to their foreheads (harnesses, anyway), so I can tell you that the Kamloops welcoming committee consists of Beau, Maxx and Bonanza and the people they were wearing.


After a productive night at the Comfort Inn and Suites in Kamloops (I actually did laundry, which was a mercy to everyone closer to me than you are right now), we went back to the train for another day of mind-blowingly vast, majestic and unique scenery as we headed toward Banff and Calgary. The terrain and vegetation went back to the original theme, though we officially entered the Rocky Mountains and became surrounded by impossibly high, craggy mountains with snow-streaked peaks and turgid little torrents pouring off them. Creeks became milky with glacial mineral dust, and ponds and lakes became mirrors.

We saw a lone moose, reportedly a female. Then we saw a couple of black bears, possibly foraging for spilled grain along the tracks.

Never mind -- I can't do it justice. The camera can't either, but I'll show you some photos that will have you shaking your head and wondering if I Photoshopped them. In the meantime, I need to sleep off the Kokanee light beer and other festive beverages the generous attendants kept offering us. I leave you with a poem I wrote (not so much a poem as a hijacked song) that was read with great seriousness by an onboard attendant too young to appreciate its homage. Feel free to sing along and add your own "Oh she's ... etc." repetitions of the chorus:


Oh I'm a passenger, so give a cheer,
I ride on the Rocky Mountaineer!

I look at trees,
I eat my lunch,
I queue for the lavat'ry.
On Wednesday I left Kamloops
Headed up to Banff, AB!

Oh I'll drink orange juice but like free beer,
I ride on the Rocky Mountaineer!


I look at trees,
I search for moose,
I want to see a bear.
The vestibule is crowded
When I take pictures there.

Oh wear a Gold Leaf on the upper tier,
To ride on the Rocky Mountaineer!

I shoot through trees
At peaks and falls,
Bald eagles and ospreys.
I love a cocktail hour
That lasts for two whole days!

June 2: Run outta town on a rail

I should mention, as a farewell to Vancouver, that I got in a brief walk on the seawall at Stanley Park, the second largest urban park in North America. Saw a couple of harbor seals!

I spent the whole day today riding the Rocky Mountaineer from Vancouver to Kamloops through some more astounding scenery. That seems to be in unlimited supply out here. I'll finish my journey to Banff on the train tomorrow and write more about it then, as well as catching up on some other stuff from the past couple of days, but I spent my whole evening here at the Comfort Inn and Suites in Kamloops figuring out how to get these videos I shot on the Whistler Mountaineer and while ziplining up on the blog. It took four hours and a technical consult from my seatmate, Joff from New Zealand, who just happens to be a professional computer guru (how's that for a stroke of luck?), but I got three out of five of them into blog-ready form. They're pretty damn good quality for a camera about the size of a pack of cigarettes. Two are of the Cheakamus Canyon, shot from the train to Whistler, and the third is shot from a secure location attached to my harness, in the vicinity of my right pectoral muscle, while I demonstrate ziplining with the help of one of our Ziptrek guides. Please watch and enjoy!

TECH RAGE NOTE: Reaction to the third video has so far been, "It sure would have been cool if you'd left the camera running while you actually slid down the zipline" -- and of course, I DID. I can see that when I play the video, but apparently others can't. Which makes me furious, because I lost a LOT of sleep fooling with that video, and it apparently doesn't even work right. So I'm going to leave it up, but let me tell you this: If you play it, look for the length. If it's loading at less than 2 minutes, DON'T BOTHER WATCHING IT. I start sliding at about 1 minute 50 and go till about 2 minutes 20, but if the full video doesn't load for you, don't waste your time. And there won't be any more video if it's going to keep me up all night and then not even play. Boy, that makes me angry.

Zippity doo dah!

OK, encountering new and different photo technology difficulties, and this is a bad time for that because I want to talk about my ziplining adventure.

(A fellow blogger offered to size my pix in Photoshop if I'd send them. I got them loaded onto this machine, and now the e-mail doesn't work so I can't send them. Of course.)

Whistler, BC, is a picturesque ski-resort town nestled in the mountains. If you've ever been to any of the nicer ski resorts in the American Rockies, with their boutiques, restaurants and boot-friendly design, you'd feel a warm appreciation for Whistler, which is in overdrive as it prepares to host the 2010 winter Olympics jointly with Vancouver.

When I arrived there Sunday morning, I had an extraordinarily lavish suite at the Fairmont, with four rooms (one of which was a closet), two bathrooms, two fireplaces, a jacuzzi bath and a TV in the john. (The top two pictures here are the view from my window.) But I didn't get to stay in it long, because I needed to pop down into town and rent a bike for a quick taste of Whistler's favorite warm-weather pastime. Seriously, the biker boys take their bikes up on the ski lifts and ride down. Not that I would do that. But I did rent a bike and go for a few-mile ride out to Lost Lake and around that smallish (for a lake) body of water. It was chilly and gray, with occasional threatening stings of rain, so I didn't have a lot of company. But it was a good ride, and I got back, returned my trusty steed and prepared for the second, way more daunting activity for the afternoon: Ziplining with Ziptrek Eco Tours.

Ziplining, for those who don't know, is getting strapped into a harness, hooked to a cable and sliding down it like James Bond. Except you do it in a helmet, not a tuxedo. Ziptrek provided my intrepid group with three guides, and I have to salute them because they somehow managed to make me feel something less than abjectly terrified -- and that's a powerful testament to their air of confidence, competence, experience and calm, because I can think of a lot of things I like better than falling off a high thing over a roaring, snowmelt-turgid creek full of rocks. Like herpes.

I'm not good with heights. But here's the amazing thing I discovered when they strapped me in, hooked me up and told me to unclench my toes and take to the air: It's only really terrifying for the first 20 feet or so. Then that wussy part of your brain stem that can't quite believe dangling over a gorge is in any way safe or natural suddenly goes, "Oh hey -- I'm not dead yet." And relaxes just a teeny bit. Also, and more seriously, there are a lot of things about ziplining that blunt the screamy edge.

1. It's not free-fall. You're going down at an angle, not plummeting straight down, and you're always well aware that the cable is holding you aloft, so you don't get that sickening stomach-up-through-the-soft-palate uncontrolled plunge feel.

2. (Or 1a really) You're never crazy, out-of-control fast. The cable is not without resistance.

3. The harness really does cradle your butt and make you feel surprisingly secure.

So after five zips, I can say it's really, really cool, especially when I worked up the courage to look down for a few seconds. (That's not me in the picture. I just wanted to show you what the rig looks like.)

After the Ziptrek tour, I got some tasty dinner at a place called Earls where my waitress worked for Ziptrek. Small resort. And I found a Cows! Cows ice cream is a Prince Edward Island chain rumored to sell the best ice cream in North America. The raspberry chocolate chip is very nice indeed. I must sample more for a scientific analysis.

I have video. Of the ziplining, silly, not of me sitting around porking out at Cows. Someday I may figure out how to upload it. In the meantime, I'm still trying to get pictures for you. Hope there's time tomorrow!

Bed now. More later.

June 1 part two: Pining for the fjord

Blogger's Note: I'm having to do this piecemeal, because Picasa will blog only four photos at a time, and I figure doing it this way is still faster than individually sizing each photo in Picasa (the version of Photoshop on this laptop is essentially useless) and adding it as a page element in Blogger. I could be wrong, but there doesn't seem to be any way to do this that isn't time-consuming and frustrating.

Also, I used my new Flip video camera to shoot some video, but I don't have time at the moment to try to figure out how to get it onto YouTube. I'm hoping there will be a couple of hours soon when I'm not (a) looking at astounding scenery, (b) packing or changing clothes, and (c) fully conscious. I've been running on four to four and a half hours' sleep since before I left, and when I fade at night after dinner, I tend to do it very suddenly. Sometimes in the middle of a sentence.

Which is why I was up at 5:30 this morning to do some remedial posting before breakfast.


But hey, are you looking at these pictures on the right? They're not optimal, because they're shot through train windows and the train is moving, but they should give you a taste of what the trip on the Whistler Mountaineer is like.

One of the things I'm noticing about rural British Columbia is the wonderful smell of the air. It always seems to have this faint, elusive perfume of pininess and fresh, damp vegetation, a very clean and natural scent.

That big hunk of gray rock is the Stawamus Chief, an enormous granite monolith that some people are apparently crazy enough to climb.


Other highlights of the train trip are Cheakamus Canyon, which is a craggy ravine where the train crosses a couple of trestles over a roaring, raging, surging river. I shot video of that, though some tipsy Australian guy talked over it.

I'm hearing lots of Australian accents, a fair number of British ones and more than a few I simply can't begin to identify. It's definitely very multicultural out here.

There's also a lot of consciousness -- going way beyond lip service -- of environmental issues, carbon emissions and sustainability. I saw evidence of logging on the trip to Whistler (stripped logs lined up along the water's edge), but the paper mills have mostly closed down and moved farther north, according to Onboard Attendant Lisa.

Despite all the talk of bears and bald eagles, I didn't spot any wildlife, but I can't imagine too many wild critters want to hang around noisy train tracks when they have acres and acres of nearly silent old-growth forest to enjoy.

I couldn't believe the couple sitting in front of me actually reclined their seats and fell asleep in the midst of all the waterfalls (Brandywine Falls is taller than Niagara, though much skinnier) and cozy mountain villages. I didn't even like to blink. This must truly be one of the most relentlessly scenic train routes on the planet.

June 1 part one: All aboard!

This morning, I checked out of Opus in Vancouver, bound for the Whistler Mountaineer train station. When you book a trip on the Whistler Mountaineer, they literally roll out the red carpet for you. Everyone is incredibly friendly. Then it gets better: The train is beautiful -- not just clean but luxurious. The "onboard attendants" can't do enough for you. You get a mimosa followed by a full breakfast followed by coffee, tea, booze and coaching about which side of the car to look out to get the best views and pictures. You know they have thought of everything when you look in your seat-back pocket and find a train-sickness bag. I am not kidding.

That lavish attention to detail would be fantastic if you were on Amtrak getting hauled from Washington to Newark. But the amazing part is that you get all that pampering AND scenery so idyllic and glorious it's hard to believe it wasn't painted on glass for a "Lord of the Rings" movie background.

Once the exits have been enumerated and the sparkling wine is on its way, you find yourself rolling through the wealthiest community in Canada, West Vancouver. The houses are large but tasteful and in keeping with the climate and culture.

As the train rolls through a park, people stand and point and wave. Lots of waving all along the route, actually, and lots of smiling. I saw one oldish lady hanging out of her window to wave at us. I did my best to wave back, but I think the Mountaineer's tinted windows prevented people from seeing us.

But after we passed the park, the scenery remained so charming that even the wildflowers along the track seemed exquisitely landscaped. There wasn't that wretched trash-grafitti-and-abandoned-rusty-things ambience you get along rail lines near so many American cities.

The water the tracks follow for about the first half of the trip is Howe Sound, the southernmost fjord in North America. Joseph pointed out a campground at Porteau Cove that, for about $15 per person per night, is only about 30 minutes from Vancouver and offers access to some of the best scuba diving on the coast. (What's down there? A sunken ship and a man-made reef.)

The train slows down for the best views, and many of us braved the chill and went back to the Henry Pickering Heritage Observation Car, built in 1914 and opened to the elements in 1955, to get pictures without risk of glass reflections.

The train left North Vancouver a little after 8 a.m., and by 10 I'd had a mimosa, a fruit plate, coffee, an omelet with potatoes and back bacon (it was inevitable) and was washing it all down with a Kokanee light beer. All that and a stunning temperate rainforest and fjord. Kind of puts a day at the office in perspective, no?