Trip Log Update.

Today is Saturday, August 21, 1999, and we are in Banff staying at the Banff Springs Hotel. 

Day One: The AMTRAK train ride was great.  The Pacific Parlor Car was a very nice addition to the trip to Seattle. Included were fresh fruit and Danish before breakfast, light snacks before lunch and complimentary champagne with wine and cheese before dinner. The car is equipped with soft stuffed chairs and booth-type tables. The meals were good: we got breakfast, lunch and dinner included with our sleeper. The train ride was also enjoyable, and we were actually early into Seattle!  If you have never stayed at a five-diamond hotel, it will be hard to describe. The Four Seasons Olympic was built in the late twenties as a premier luxury hotel.  It has since been remodeled, but has kept its gracious charm. The lobby is two stories tall and has a mezzanine surrounding it: one end has stairs to the main ballrooms (both up and down) and the other an elegant restaurant. Our room was at least three times bigger than our master bedroom in Corte Madera; and the beds were turned down each night, ready for us to climb into the soft comfort and peacefully sleep the night away. Our room was so large you could not see the bathroom from the bed. The only part not rated very high was the view (the top of the glass pool cover and a side street); but, after all, we were not there for the view.

Days Two - Five:  We did our convention duty at the registration desk, visited with friends, and ate lots of good food. I labeled and stamped the CALLBOARDs and posted them before we left for Vancouver, BC. We walked and shopped Seattle like good tourists. Part of the convention was a tour of the Flight Museum at Boeing Field. This is a definite must for anyone visiting Seattle.  I had all kinds of trouble with the digital-camera-to-Website technology (the camera only wants to save bitmaps) and I am afraid that pictures will have to wait till I arrive home at the end of the trip. I even downloaded a file conversion program and bought new software from Microsoft, next time I'll pack the original program diskettes.

Day Six: AMTRAK to Vancouver BC aboard the Cascades was grand: a newspaper awaited us on the seat, the coffee from the bistro car was excellent and the ride was a new experience for both of us. The train hugs Puget Sound most of the way, often right at the water's edge. We arrived on time and went through Customs and got a cab to the Hotel Vancouver. The hotel is very nice, but lacked something from comparison to the Olympic (probably an unfair comparison -- the Olympic is a hard act to follow!). After a nice dinner with some local friends and a short walk (Vancouver is a city that you can walk around in at night and feel safe), we retired early.

Day Seven: We departed our hotel at the ungodly hour of 6:10 AM. We had received a fax from the travel agent and were instructed to disregard the printed instructions and go to the North Vancouver Station (this seemed odd, but we did as instructed). Of course this was the wrong station for the Rocky Mountaineer, so it was back across town to the VIA station. These two cab rides from one end of town to the other would have been impossible at any other time of day or in any other city, but we made it in time and the travel agent refunded us the cab fares. They billed this trip as the "ride of your life" and they were certainly not far off the mark. It started slow, real slow thru the yards in Vancouver., but after a couple of hours the train ride picked up some speed. The service started immediately, with a champagne and orange juice toast to the adventure ahead. The meal service was unparalleled. The food was very tasty, and the portions were of a size that didn't stuff you so full you were uncomfortable, but also didn't make you feel as if you had  not been fed. They sat us in two seatings for each meal; we were in the first seating the first day and the second on day two. Lunch was again of exceptional quality, and the waiters were fun to be with as well. The seats were large and the leg room generous. We had two cloth tote bags, Mary's purse and two camera bags and were only slightly crowded. The windows were spotless and curved almost to the center of the car roof. We were up about five feet above the regular cars on the rest of the train, so we could see over all but the tallest of double stack rail cars. We got a good view of the tops of the diesels on the freights we passed along the route. We had a vestibule on our car that held forty people, but on the first day we were in the middle of the train so the view was sort of obstructed. The scenery was grand and the canyons and rivers along the ride were a lot of fun to see, as were the back yards and towns we went through. I liked the industrial sections, always looking out for that perfect spot to model. After what seemed to be too short a time (it was actually after five), we arrived at Kamloops, the first stop on our trip. We boarded a bus to our motel and found our bags already in the room waiting for us. After a swim in the pool and a light dinner, we retired for the night.

Day Eight: Again that super (for us) early departure of six in the morning, and then by bus to the waiting train. After boarding, we departed and the scenery just kept on rolling by. First a river then a lake then a mountain, then a river then a canyon, but now we were the end of the train and the rear platform was a grand place to ride. We had muffins and coffee while we waited for breakfast today, and cheese and crackers while we waited for lunch (we never went too long without being fed something!), and again the food was excellent. The two car attendants waited on us hand and foot, and the two servers in the diner portion (in the lower portion of the dome car) were super as well. There was also a kitchen staff of three in our car, which was one of two domes and six coaches on the train the second day. Again the train ride was over too soon for me (it was after six when we arrived in Banff) and we were on a bus to the Banff Springs Hotel. We checked into our room, then checked out this grand old "Castle in the Rockies"; and what a place it is. Our room overlooks the hills behind the hotel and our first thought was to take the tram ride to the top tomorrow. We went for a swim in the salt water heated outdoor pool, then tried out the spa before climbing into our bed for the night.

Day Nine: At the Banff Springs Hotel, it was cloudy this morning as we made our reservations for the gondola ride. As I started to write this stuff down, the thunder rolled and the lightning flashed, accompanied by a heavy downpour of rain (and even some snow). Now it is clearing and it is almost time for our gondola ride to dinner at the summit of Sulphur Mountain. What a ride it was, ten feet per second, up over 2000 feet at about a 50 degree angle. The ride was mercifully short, but the view would have been worth twice the ride. 360 degrees of view with the Banff Springs hotel looking like a paper cutout structure of an English castle. We really were right in the middle of space on the observation deck. The pictures will be awesome, I wish I could post them to the website now.