| Sat., June 22 The Koreans won the game at about 2am and bedlam erupted 14 stories below our disturbed slumber. The morning news would show Robson Street looking like Times Square on New Year’s Eve. The noise went on and on. It started to dwindle around 8am as Sharry and I went for an early breakfast hunt. Suddenly, a fresh round of horn honking approached from over a hill. Turkey –another Cinderella team—had just won its game, and Vancouver’s Turkish delegation was no less enthusiastic if much less numerous. Five or six cars of flag-waving fans went up and down the street, waking anyone who might have wanted to sleep in. Our bus tour of the city was living proof of the bittersweet shoulder-shrugging phrase “you can’t go home again.” The area near the Expo grounds had not been developed but had instead returned to some of its slumlike roots. Each stop was crowded with tour buses, and we were more than ready to take our bus out of that crowd. We took a long walk down Robson Street toward downtown, stopping for lunch at a rooftop sports bar. (Thanks to the girls’ birdlike appetities we understand we’re going to be throwing away a lot of the ample portions served wherever we go.) I left the girls to attend a Georgia O’Keefe exhibit at the art museum and wandered into a Chapters bookstore. Three floors of nirvana! I checked my e-mail for the first time in almost a week. There were 96 messages… not one from a breathing human. The girls joined me rather quickly; the museum was practically empty. We walked a lot further and eventually came to the Gastown Jazz Festival. It was an old district doing its best to appeared renovated yet retro, and it could very well succeed. There were tented stages dotting several blocks of the strip. We watched a street juggler who spent an hour juggling insults but almost no actual objects. Chelsea’s career plans changed again. A quick cab ride back to the hotel –with a pleasant dinner at our hotel’s sidewalk café-- ended our final visit to Vancouver. We went to bed with a sense of thankfulness that no World Cup games were scheduled |
| Sun., June 23 We had to be up by 5:00am, but it was again a day we were excited to have start early. Our train would be leaving in a couple of hours. This part of the group tour was handled perfectly. We stayed on the bus only briefly, and then walked right through the depot and onto our private car. The car is comprised only of large seats, like the ones you see in first-class on airliners, with plenty of leg room. Two rows, two across. (I was hoping the four of us could sit around a table, but it wasn’t built that way.) Jarome (“Jeremy”) was our car attendant. He was our feeder and our entertainer, providing a non-stop food cart and a running commentary on the passing scenery. In the industrial exurbs of Vancouver, that was a difficult job. But eventually we were rolling over prairies and eventually some lovely rolling foothills on our way to the Rockies. Apart from nearly non-stop eating, there was also nearly non-stop card playing. Mostly gin and cribbage. There was also time for reading. My book choice “The Grand Tour” turned out to be written in English. That’s British English. That’s almost unreadable, but I’m giving it my best effort. At the end of the afternoon we arrived in a beautiful place called Kamloops at the edge of the foothills. We were bused up the steep hills above the train station to our hotel by a local driver who was so verbally accomodating. Nearly every sentence ended with “okay” or “if you don’t mind.” From the hotel, we climbed the hills even higher to see what we could find for food. Walking past a pair of strip malls, we found a nice family restaurant and paid a fair price for more daughter-to-dumpster dinners! (Few places would use the slogan: great food, just too damn much of it!) We played a few games at an otherwise empty video arcade and while the girls enjoyed TV in their separate room, Sharry and I had a few drinks in an otherwise empty rooftop hotel bar with a bartender who sounded a theme echoed by Jarome and a few other area men we would meet on the trip. They loved their first “adult” jobs (bartender, tour guide, etc.) but are now realizing in their mid-to-late 20’s that they’ll have to go back to school to get a degree in “something,” maybe hospitality management, and try to find something that pays the rent. |
| Mon., June 24 Back aboard the train for an 8:30 departure. More of the games and books and food, but today’s trip was also filled with the first truckload of “ooh’s” and “aah’s” and “wow’s” that would pour out of our mouths over the next few days. And I’m not even going to try to put it all into words. They were the mountains. Rocky, majestic, snow-capped, massive. Look at the pictures and add the remaining 1,000 words. We arrive in Banff in the early evening. Jessie, our bus driver, takes us for the very short drive into town. I’ve never been to Vail, but it strikes me that way: a resort town with lots of pretty shops and an active pedestrian presence. Our hotel is lodge-like, but the rooms are so small –in Jessie’s words—you’d need to swing a dead cat with an awfully small tail in order to avoid hitting all four walls at once. We take a walk through town and end up eating at another Old Spaghetti Factory! But before we get there, Sharry is keen enough to find information on an evening horseback ride that includes dinner. She signs us up for tomorrow night: 3 on horse, me on a wagon! |
| Tue. June 25 In the morning, we skip breakfast. Two days of constant train fare takes its toll! We leave for a bus tour around the Banff area. The first thing you notice along the main drag in Banff is the awe-inspiring backdrop for the town: Mount Cascade. It looks like God took his fingers and dragged them down the slope, drawing them closer together. The ice and snow filled the valleys, water flows down near the bottom of each. We see Bow Falls, the first of several outrageous waterfalls we’ll encounter. We see Banff Springs Hotel and other sights. Then, if you haven’t by now, you notice the other wonder, the other mountain that completes the Banff bookends: Mount Rundle with its diagonally jagged edges thrusting toward heaven. Layers of rock that confirm its origin as layers on the bottom of a primal ocean, but an altitude so high it seems the ocean could never have existed. We head down the highway en route to Chateau Lake Louise, but we stop at Morraine Lake for a photo stop. It is clearly the more “perfect” of the two lakes. We climb a large rockpile, left by a long-withdrawn glacier, and amaze at what can be created by rocks and ice. Chateau Lake Louise, by comparison, exists more as a tourist trap.. a place to feed elderly travelers by the hundreds. We return to Banff and quickly change into horse-riding clothes which turn out to be much too heavy for the near-90 degree early evening temperature. We encounter a mule deer munching right along our pedestrian path. He doesn’t bother to move at all as we pass by. Our evening ride is made up of about 40 people in all, many from a company meeting. The girls have a nice horse ride; I have a nice chat with the women in the wagon. (My machiso may be minimal but my hindquarters are happy!) We enjoy steak and beans and fresh brownies at a picnic area before the return ride. While the horse riders get a magnificant view from a foothill, we encounter elk in two different areas along our paved path. And on the late walk back to the hotel, it occurs to us that the sun isn’t setting until after 10 o’clock. (10:06, to be exact.) |