I can't post any pictures yet since I'm in Vancouver BC, but I will once I digest them all when we get back home. It has been a super vacation and very varied! We are ending on an upscale note staying in the Granville Island Hotel in downtown Vancouver. We had a delicious lunch overlooking the dock after we arrived by train - 4 hours from Seattle. This evening we strolled the seawall walkway that travels around the edge of the bay. Tomorrow we will see a Shakespeare comedy on the beach.
Took the train from Cleveland to Chicago. The train was over an hour late so it didn't leave until after 4:00 am. Chicago was fun in our brief 5 hour stay. We took the bus to the Field Museum, which is a huge natural history museum. The city was beautiful, clean and friendly. I'd like to go back for a long weekend.
The train trip from Chicago left on time at 2:00. Our roomette was hilarious! Sort of a closet with seats and a window. They gave us champagne. Food is included if you have a sleeper. The meals were good and the people we met were fun and friendly. Everyone staggers like a drunk down the aisles giggling the whole way as they attempt not to 'drop in' other peoples' roomettes! Sleeping was a bit of a challenge. I slept in the top bunk which was so close to the ceiling that I couldn't sit up and so narrow that both arms were on the metal side bars. Since there is no window up there it felt coffin-like. This was accentuated when the train stopped and a fuse blew and no air was flowing. I got a bit panicky at that point and had George open the door for air. Once the train started again all was well and I actually slept pretty well. We arrived in East Glacier at 6:45 to be met by Jill and Dan as a surprise. Its a good thing they did see us there since it turned out we never saw them after that. The Glacier Park Lodge is awesome!
Took the train from Cleveland to Chicago. The train was over an hour late so it didn't leave until after 4:00 am. Chicago was fun in our brief 5 hour stay. We took the bus to the Field Museum, which is a huge natural history museum. The city was beautiful, clean and friendly. I'd like to go back for a long weekend.
The train trip from Chicago left on time at 2:00. Our roomette was hilarious! Sort of a closet with seats and a window. They gave us champagne. Food is included if you have a sleeper. The meals were good and the people we met were fun and friendly. Everyone staggers like a drunk down the aisles giggling the whole way as they attempt not to 'drop in' other peoples' roomettes! Sleeping was a bit of a challenge. I slept in the top bunk which was so close to the ceiling that I couldn't sit up and so narrow that both arms were on the metal side bars. Since there is no window up there it felt coffin-like. This was accentuated when the train stopped and a fuse blew and no air was flowing. I got a bit panicky at that point and had George open the door for air. Once the train started again all was well and I actually slept pretty well. We arrived in East Glacier at 6:45 to be met by Jill and Dan as a surprise. Its a good thing they did see us there since it turned out we never saw them after that. The Glacier Park Lodge is awesome!
Took the Red Bus Big Sky 8.5 hour Tour our first full day in Glacier. These red buses arrived at the park in 1936, and have been totally refurbished while preserving their original outword appearance. We had a terrific guide, Howard, a retired gentleman from Oklahoma who has done this for 5 summers. I know we would have missed a lot if we had not taken this tour plus we learned a great deal of history, great jokes and more! Met some more great people on the tour too. We went through just about every type of weather in one day on this tour. Saw some mountain goats and a marmot and lots of wildflowers that I was itching to get a close up look at. Took a lot of short hikes in various places too.
Tackled the shuttles to get to our next lodging at Rising Sun Motor Lodge. The shuttles worked well! We never had to rent a car during our entire vacation. We had a half of a double cabin which was very comfortable. We decided to try hiking an 11 mile trail to a lake near us, but we only got to hike a couple of miles when a thunderstorm decided to mean business. We got thoroughly soaked and George's cell phone died a lingering death as a result. Fortunately there was a heater in our room, so we were able to dry everything out. Took a shuttle back up to the wild and wooly Logan's Pass area to do some more exploring once it stopped raining. Had a nice dinner back at the Hotel Dining Room. All the workers here are from all over the world and country with the place of origin on their name tags. What a great place to work for a college student over the summer! They get room and board in addition to a salary and have this park at their disposal! They were all very happy and enthusiastic about working there too.
I convinced the desk clerk to let us leave our luggage behind the front desk and headed off with our backpacks to hike to the Garden Wall along the Highline Trail at Logan's Pass. We ended up doing WAY MORE than that planned 7 mile round trip hike. We met a couple, Mark and Mary Sipe, at the very beginning of the hike and they asked us if we would like to accompany them while hiking. They had planned to hike the Highline Trail all the way to Granite Chalet and then hike the 4 miles down from their to The Loop shuttle stop for a return trip to Logan's Pass via shuttle. This meant a total of about 12 miles with a more stenuous section than we had planned to tackle just before hiking to Sperry Chalet. I'm sure glad we did it! The views were SPECTACULAR (see two of the above pictures). However, we were REALLY sore the next day for our hike to Sperry Chalet. Almost at the beginning of this trail it travels along a narrow ledge way up above the Going to the Sun Road - there is even a cable to hang on to. Right at this point a mountain goat decided that he really needed to pass us on the trail right there! All we could do was flatten ourselves up against the cliff stone wall so he could get by! In my excitement I managed to mess up the setting on my camera, so I didn't get the closest shot of him. The shot I got was just before he passed us. I happily examined and photographed wildflowers at the rear of the group. We had to cross several waterflall areas as the snow melt tumbled down the sides of the cliffs above. There were several snow fields to carefully cross as well. We were joined by a lady from Israel about half way through the hike to Granite Chalet. We all had a great time traveling together. At one beautiful bend in the trail (above picture) we came across 3 marmots playing on a large rock. They put on quite a show and even played around our feet and followed us for a bit down the trail. I got several cute pictures of them (see facebook for a couple). The views were spectacular all the way to Granite Chalet. Hiking back down we passed through a section where a forest fire had been. Lots of wildflowers with tiny butterflies on them. It was a very steep climb down 4 miles and we were all pretty battered by the time we got down. My little toes and George's knees complained the most. We took a shuttle back up to Logan's pass, which took quite a while since they are repairing the Going to the Sun Road. Mark and Mary drove us in their car to our former hotel to pick up our luggage since it was on their way. We took a shuttle with our luggage back up to Logan's pass, again, to catch the shuttle going to McDonald Lodge. There were a bunch of people trying to do the same thing, so we had to wait for the next one. We gratefully climbed into bed in our cabin at McDonald Lodge to try to recover for the hike to Sperry Chalet the next day!
We were both a bit dubious as to whether we could get our bodies to cooperate to make the 6.5 mile climb to Sperry Chalet. However, once we got moving the stiffness wore off a bit. We met a ranger on his way up who warned us that a grizzly bear with 2 cubs was in the neighborhood and that we needed to make noise and be vigilent. It certainly adds spice to a hike knowing that! A couple of mule deer appeared along the path and walked a head of us for a ways, which was somehow comforting. We were following a stream which we could hear but not see as it tumbled down the mountainside in the opposite direction. As we climbed the vegetation changed to be more like the previous day's hike. We started in a forest of hemlock, spruce, pine and cedar trees. It also got more rocky as we progressed. We were passed by horseback riders (we had considered this method up, but it is quite pricey!) and we were passed by the mule train going up to Sperry with supplies as well as lots of other hikers in both directions. One section of the trail was like a rock garden - gorgeous! We finally saw our distination perched high above us on a cliff about a mile more along the trail. It gradually got closer as we doggedly kept putting one foot in front of the other. The last half mile had snow about a foot and a half deep which they had shoveled through for the mules, horses and hikers. I felt very emotional when we finally reached Sperry! Talk about tired and sore! We were greeted with delicious glasses of lemonade in the dinning/kitchen/office building. There are no keyes to rooms, but we were given an orientation and directed to our room in the lodge a short hike from where we were. We stripped off our sweat soaked clothes and redressed in our dark and fridgid room in several layers (dark wood paneled, a bed, chair and sort of a desk, a window, no electricity) and crawled into bed for a nap. We fortunately had just arrived before the hail/rain storm that caught a few others. I don't know how you would ever dry out clothes once wet up there! When the sun came out again, I ventured out in a sort of awkward stagger to take some pictures and warm up in the sunshine on the rocky edge of the cliff overlooking the valley we had climbed up from. You could see Lake McDonald up there. A curious marmot was playing around nearby. Later someone spotted the grizzly bear we had been hearing about all the way up on the trail with her two cubs playing on a meadow across the valley near the trail up. We all watched fascinated (and grateful that she was a safe distance away!). She was really too far away for my camera to get good pictures. The two cubs seem to have a lot of energy. The outhouse buildingwas very nice actually with running cold water only. It had solar panels on the roof for night lighting. Dinner was delicious. They sure do feed you well. We had a lentil soup, fresh baked bread, rice pilaf, chicken with a fruit sauce, veggie and chocolate cake. We were too tired to come back for the hot chocolate later. I didn't want to have to go to the bathrooms in the middle of the night anyway over that uneven rocky terrain. In the morning George was greeted by two mountain goats that followed him as he went back in the lodge up to the porch. I got some pictures of them later. One was intent on eating the dirt near the lodge. After a splendid breakfast made to order, we assembled ourselves for the hike back down. It was a bit nerve wracking to hike the trail where we saw the bear the night before, but we saw no signs of her and made a lot of noise on the way down. We made pretty good time at first and overall the trip down was an hour shorter (4 hrs.) than the trip up. George's knees really gave him grief after about 3. 5 miles down. We had considered stopping to eat the lunch Sperry Chalet had packed us on the way down. However, just as we voiced this plan an couple of wild eyed hikers coming up the trail stopped us and said they had just seen a mountain lion a couple of bends down the trail in front of us! Needless to say we decided against stopping to eat and limped our way all the way down to McDonald Lodge before settling into their cushioned chairs overlooking the lake at the back of the Lodge for lunch. The hotel staff was terrific and retrieved our luggage and another note from Jill. We ate some pizza and Moose Drool and Troutslayer Beers in the Jammer Joes Restaurant. Delicious! Waiting in the lobby of the Lodge we ran into Mark and Mary who had been driving all day around Montana. We bought them a drink and had a nice time catching up on the previous days adventures. Our shuttle driver was an interesting 21 year old, Kevin, from Chicago. Both he and his brother were working at Glacier this summer. He told us his harrowing tale of climbing and surviving Brown Mountain in a hail storm the previous day as well as a tale about a peer at the park that was chased by two grizzlies when he was unwisely running on one of the trails. We met a nice retired school teacher at the train station and I helped her get her bags to the train. We were accomplished train riders at this point so we did much better at getting settled in with less effort! The train porters were very nice. We finally got to shower also, which was much appreciated!
The train station in Seattle is huge! We arrived on time and decided to hike the 1+ miles to our B&B, Penshione Nichols, with our luggage. Why stop exercising now??! We passed lots of interesting looking shops as we hiked from Pioneer Square to the Pikes Place Market area. Much to our chagrin and the dismay of our legs and knees, our B&B was several flights of stairs UP! Hauling our lugguage up their was one final test. Fortunately we stayed here 5 days so we didn't have to repeat the experience for a while. We ventured out to a nearby French cafe for a quiche for lunch, which was excellent. Then we took a walk down the street with our dirty laundry to a nearby cleaners - 20 lbs. worth. We continued to walk the area and visited the Olympic Sculpture Park and walked along the Waterfront area to orient ourselves. Seattle is a bustling city with lots of interesting places to visit, shop and eat! We ate at a restaurant called the 'Pink Door' in the Post Alley behind the B&B. Quite fancy!
The next morning after a breakfast of lots of fruit and breads, we ventured out to the Seattle Aquarium. It was wonderful! Very well designed. The touch pools were a favorite. We then ventured toward the shopping district in downtown Seattle to get a replacement cell phone for George. I bought a beautiful blue skirt at Cold Water Creek. Took the monorail to Seattle Center and explored that area before hiking back to sample some Washington wines and cheese. Bought a bottle of Merlot and had crab cakes at a little restuarant on 1st Street called Amber.
We ate the muffins we had purchased at a Bakery the previous day in a nearby Starbucks and headed for the Waterfront for our 4 hour cruise on the Victoria Clipper to Victoria BC. Gave our left over muffin to a grubby man begging for food on the way to the dock. It was cloudy and cold so I didn't take any pictures on the way. Victoria is gorgeous. We had booked a city and Butchart garden bus tour that took up most of the day. The driver was very energetic and informative and took us through half of the city on the way to the gardens. We had just 2 hours at the gardens - not nearly enough time! OMG!!!! These were THE MOST BEAUTIFUL GARDENS I HAVE EVER SEEN!!! Of course if you have 50+ gardeners working 50+ years this is the result. You could shoot a camera in any direction and get a great shot. The quarry transformation garden was amazing as were the rose and japanese gardens. Flowers everywhere and beautiful fountains. Saw the second half of the city on the way back. Then we were let loose. We bought some chocolates, a sissor button, felted quilting fabric and a tote bag. Ate at a place called 'Earl's". We didn't get back to our B&B until after 10:00 pm.
Walked to the very interestingly designed Seattle Public Library. Got there a little before opening at 10:00, so cooled our heels with some coffee at Seattle's Best. Checked out our email after we were signed in with the library. They have rows and rows of computers and they all filled up after we got there! George saw someone arrested there and taken away! Our trip to the bathroom was an adventure through futuristic red curved hallways. It made me slightly nauseous! Took the monorail from there to the Science Fiction Museum. That was cool! Saw original Star Trek uniforms and props from Star Wars, etc. It could expand, but it was good. Reclaimed our 20 lbs of laundry (one shirt damaged!). George took a nap and I went to Patagonia and bought a black skirt and a little black dress! Ate dinner at Pike Brewery - had a 6 beer sampler and 3 different appetizers for our dinner shared between us. Very good!
We were both a bit dubious as to whether we could get our bodies to cooperate to make the 6.5 mile climb to Sperry Chalet. However, once we got moving the stiffness wore off a bit. We met a ranger on his way up who warned us that a grizzly bear with 2 cubs was in the neighborhood and that we needed to make noise and be vigilent. It certainly adds spice to a hike knowing that! A couple of mule deer appeared along the path and walked a head of us for a ways, which was somehow comforting. We were following a stream which we could hear but not see as it tumbled down the mountainside in the opposite direction. As we climbed the vegetation changed to be more like the previous day's hike. We started in a forest of hemlock, spruce, pine and cedar trees. It also got more rocky as we progressed. We were passed by horseback riders (we had considered this method up, but it is quite pricey!) and we were passed by the mule train going up to Sperry with supplies as well as lots of other hikers in both directions. One section of the trail was like a rock garden - gorgeous! We finally saw our distination perched high above us on a cliff about a mile more along the trail. It gradually got closer as we doggedly kept putting one foot in front of the other. The last half mile had snow about a foot and a half deep which they had shoveled through for the mules, horses and hikers. I felt very emotional when we finally reached Sperry! Talk about tired and sore! We were greeted with delicious glasses of lemonade in the dinning/kitchen/office building. There are no keyes to rooms, but we were given an orientation and directed to our room in the lodge a short hike from where we were. We stripped off our sweat soaked clothes and redressed in our dark and fridgid room in several layers (dark wood paneled, a bed, chair and sort of a desk, a window, no electricity) and crawled into bed for a nap. We fortunately had just arrived before the hail/rain storm that caught a few others. I don't know how you would ever dry out clothes once wet up there! When the sun came out again, I ventured out in a sort of awkward stagger to take some pictures and warm up in the sunshine on the rocky edge of the cliff overlooking the valley we had climbed up from. You could see Lake McDonald up there. A curious marmot was playing around nearby. Later someone spotted the grizzly bear we had been hearing about all the way up on the trail with her two cubs playing on a meadow across the valley near the trail up. We all watched fascinated (and grateful that she was a safe distance away!). She was really too far away for my camera to get good pictures. The two cubs seem to have a lot of energy. The outhouse buildingwas very nice actually with running cold water only. It had solar panels on the roof for night lighting. Dinner was delicious. They sure do feed you well. We had a lentil soup, fresh baked bread, rice pilaf, chicken with a fruit sauce, veggie and chocolate cake. We were too tired to come back for the hot chocolate later. I didn't want to have to go to the bathrooms in the middle of the night anyway over that uneven rocky terrain. In the morning George was greeted by two mountain goats that followed him as he went back in the lodge up to the porch. I got some pictures of them later. One was intent on eating the dirt near the lodge. After a splendid breakfast made to order, we assembled ourselves for the hike back down. It was a bit nerve wracking to hike the trail where we saw the bear the night before, but we saw no signs of her and made a lot of noise on the way down. We made pretty good time at first and overall the trip down was an hour shorter (4 hrs.) than the trip up. George's knees really gave him grief after about 3. 5 miles down. We had considered stopping to eat the lunch Sperry Chalet had packed us on the way down. However, just as we voiced this plan an couple of wild eyed hikers coming up the trail stopped us and said they had just seen a mountain lion a couple of bends down the trail in front of us! Needless to say we decided against stopping to eat and limped our way all the way down to McDonald Lodge before settling into their cushioned chairs overlooking the lake at the back of the Lodge for lunch. The hotel staff was terrific and retrieved our luggage and another note from Jill. We ate some pizza and Moose Drool and Troutslayer Beers in the Jammer Joes Restaurant. Delicious! Waiting in the lobby of the Lodge we ran into Mark and Mary who had been driving all day around Montana. We bought them a drink and had a nice time catching up on the previous days adventures. Our shuttle driver was an interesting 21 year old, Kevin, from Chicago. Both he and his brother were working at Glacier this summer. He told us his harrowing tale of climbing and surviving Brown Mountain in a hail storm the previous day as well as a tale about a peer at the park that was chased by two grizzlies when he was unwisely running on one of the trails. We met a nice retired school teacher at the train station and I helped her get her bags to the train. We were accomplished train riders at this point so we did much better at getting settled in with less effort! The train porters were very nice. We finally got to shower also, which was much appreciated!
The train station in Seattle is huge! We arrived on time and decided to hike the 1+ miles to our B&B, Penshione Nichols, with our luggage. Why stop exercising now??! We passed lots of interesting looking shops as we hiked from Pioneer Square to the Pikes Place Market area. Much to our chagrin and the dismay of our legs and knees, our B&B was several flights of stairs UP! Hauling our lugguage up their was one final test. Fortunately we stayed here 5 days so we didn't have to repeat the experience for a while. We ventured out to a nearby French cafe for a quiche for lunch, which was excellent. Then we took a walk down the street with our dirty laundry to a nearby cleaners - 20 lbs. worth. We continued to walk the area and visited the Olympic Sculpture Park and walked along the Waterfront area to orient ourselves. Seattle is a bustling city with lots of interesting places to visit, shop and eat! We ate at a restaurant called the 'Pink Door' in the Post Alley behind the B&B. Quite fancy!
The next morning after a breakfast of lots of fruit and breads, we ventured out to the Seattle Aquarium. It was wonderful! Very well designed. The touch pools were a favorite. We then ventured toward the shopping district in downtown Seattle to get a replacement cell phone for George. I bought a beautiful blue skirt at Cold Water Creek. Took the monorail to Seattle Center and explored that area before hiking back to sample some Washington wines and cheese. Bought a bottle of Merlot and had crab cakes at a little restuarant on 1st Street called Amber.
We ate the muffins we had purchased at a Bakery the previous day in a nearby Starbucks and headed for the Waterfront for our 4 hour cruise on the Victoria Clipper to Victoria BC. Gave our left over muffin to a grubby man begging for food on the way to the dock. It was cloudy and cold so I didn't take any pictures on the way. Victoria is gorgeous. We had booked a city and Butchart garden bus tour that took up most of the day. The driver was very energetic and informative and took us through half of the city on the way to the gardens. We had just 2 hours at the gardens - not nearly enough time! OMG!!!! These were THE MOST BEAUTIFUL GARDENS I HAVE EVER SEEN!!! Of course if you have 50+ gardeners working 50+ years this is the result. You could shoot a camera in any direction and get a great shot. The quarry transformation garden was amazing as were the rose and japanese gardens. Flowers everywhere and beautiful fountains. Saw the second half of the city on the way back. Then we were let loose. We bought some chocolates, a sissor button, felted quilting fabric and a tote bag. Ate at a place called 'Earl's". We didn't get back to our B&B until after 10:00 pm.
Walked to the very interestingly designed Seattle Public Library. Got there a little before opening at 10:00, so cooled our heels with some coffee at Seattle's Best. Checked out our email after we were signed in with the library. They have rows and rows of computers and they all filled up after we got there! George saw someone arrested there and taken away! Our trip to the bathroom was an adventure through futuristic red curved hallways. It made me slightly nauseous! Took the monorail from there to the Science Fiction Museum. That was cool! Saw original Star Trek uniforms and props from Star Wars, etc. It could expand, but it was good. Reclaimed our 20 lbs of laundry (one shirt damaged!). George took a nap and I went to Patagonia and bought a black skirt and a little black dress! Ate dinner at Pike Brewery - had a 6 beer sampler and 3 different appetizers for our dinner shared between us. Very good!
Tuesday July 14 we took the Seattle Underground tour, which was very interesting. Seattle has connections to Cleveland in that one of the founders was trying to build a city to resemble his experience with Cleveland. Went to the wine tasting room again and bought some food for people back home. Ate at Pike's Brewery again and packed up to head for Vancouver by train.
The trip to Vancouver started with a quick taxi ride to the train station. The 4 hour ride to Vancouver allowed me to finish one of dad's socks and start the next! It was very foggy so we couldn't see much outside the train. Canadian customs took a while, but after a quick taxi ride to Granville Island (through the area where the 2010 Winter Olympics will be) we were settled into the Granville Island Hotel. Vancouver is lovely and lively from our experience! They love being outdoors, walking, bicycling, roller blading, boating and eating! Lots of dogs and wheelchairs too! Ate lunch on the pation of the Dockside Restuarant (part of the hotel) with a lovely view of the city and little harbor. Took a walk around the Island and through the Public Market - like the West Side Market in Cleveland, but bigger. Walked over to where the Bard on the Beach stages were too.
Thurs. July 16: We just took the most GORGEOUS bicycle ride ever around Stanley Park in Vancouver BC! We biked for around 5 hours after taking the Aquabus (a cute little ferry boat) across the bay to Stanley Park. They have paved paths for bicycles, skaters and walkers all along the seawall coast. Gorgeous huge cedar trees and hemlock as well as gardens and statuary all along the way. The temperature was perfect, the sky blue. The path is one way which helps since you are so busy gawking at the beautiful scenery everywhere. We rode all around the park stopping for pictures, lunch and ice cream at various points. We also took a path down the middle of the island which was gravel. Had a lovely Jamican brew when we got back overlooking the dock and downtown Vancouver. Went to the Bard on the Beach performance of "Alls Well That Ends Well". It was a sold out crowd and very good.
Our last day in Vancouver started leisurely with a search for pastries and coffee at the public market on the Island. Decided to bicycle around the city again so we rented our bikes and headed off to the trails that encircled the bay and downtown area. We had a lovely ride - part of which went through the Olympic Village they are building for the February 2010 Olympics. We decided to continue our ride to Stanley Park again and revisited that area. What a great place to live! They hardly have any winter and even grow palm trees! Ate dinner at the Dockside Restaurant at our Hotel and then strolled to the Public Market for dessert. Sat and listened to a street musician and watched little ones chasing the pigeons and seagulls before packing up to head home.
The airport is definitely not as nice as a train station! We had to stand in 4 long lines before boarding our plane (5 cruise ships had arrived and everyone was flying out). Las Vegas was HOT 110 and a bit confusing to get around in the airport. Josh picked us up and drove us home. What a wonderful vacation!!!!!!!!!!
