Back to Vancouver via Kamloops

Back to Vancouver via Kamloops

As you can tell by the posting date, we're already back home. Took a break from the blog as well while we were in California!

The last photos of the valley (site of the golf course) behind the Banff Springs Hotel on our second evening. A brief rain shower passed through and left a beautiful rainbow that lasted quite a long time.

  

After a relatively busy five days travelling and sightseeing between Jasper and Banff, we boarded a new train to take us back to Vancouver with a last overnight stop in Kamloops. There were not many of us from the northward trip going back to Vancouver on the train - some people left at Jasper and others in Banff after the bus portion - and we were hoping that our little band of rowdies would be kept together. Unfortunately it wasn't meant to be. Since we weren't travelling as a group, four of us were in one car and four in another, so we made a point in Kamloops of exchanging information in case we didn't see each other in Vancouver. This would be quite possible since our train down from Jasper had about 18 cars in total, and we added another four in Kamloops. This made for a very long train and about 700 passengers!

Here are some photos of the trip back.

Kinbasket Lake

The cairn marking where the last spike of the CP Rail line was
driven on November 7, 1885,  linking all of  Canada
by rail

And, of course, we couldn't leave out a few more food pictures from the train!

Tuna Nicoise salad

Hamburger

Berry crumble with ice cream

Shuswap River

Sicamous Lake, the Houseboat Capital of Canada. The western answer to the Trent-Severn Waterway! The lake is huge, so it can handle the 300-plus houseboats that travel on it every year with room to spare.

Nearing Kamloops 

We stayed overnight in the Sandman Inn in downtown Kamloops. We actually liked it better than the Banff Springs! A modern, comfortable hotel with a sports bar, Moxie's restaurant AND an ice cream parlour attached to the hotel. All across the street from a big park and the river. There was a summer series concert in the park going on when we arrived; we took a walk around to stretch our legs with the music in the background.

In Riverside Park

The Rainbow Valley, so named because of the various
 minerals in the rock that oxidized into
different colours.

The landscape changes south of Kamloops, into a desert climate. Actually, the extension of the same desert the includes the Grand Canyon. Very different from anything else we'd seen so far. It was hard to remember that we were even in Canada!

The Thompson River

Part of a large herd of female Bighorn Sheep

The two photos above show the confluence of the Thompson River (clear) and Fraser River (cloudy). Due to the Thompson River flowing through numerous lakes where the rock flour, sediment from the glaciers, can deposit to the bottom and leave clear water to run. The Fraser doesn't run through any lakes so it can't lose this sediment.

Hell's Gate, a very narrow and treacherous part
of the river, so named by the first
British explorers to try to navigate
the Fraser by canoe. Wonder why?

Mount Baker, in Washington State

Arriving back into Vancouver

We had one night in Vancouver before we headed off to San Francisco and Napa for a few days of rest from our vacation. We didn't know the days would be quite as long and busy on the Rocky Mountaineer so it turned out that this add-on was a great idea.

Road Tour: Jasper, Lake Louise and Banff

Just as bright and early as we needed to be for the train, we had to have our bags out at the Jasper Park Lodge. They would accompany us in the buses to Lake Louise and then on to Banff. We know from our last trip out here, a mere 27 years ago, that the Icefield Parkway between Jasper and Banff is some of the most picturesque driving in the country, so we were prepared to take lots of photos at our stops. So we hope nobody is disappointed that this posting will be mostly photos.  So, here we go:

The Rocky Mountaineer at Jasper Station. A long train heading
back down to Kamloops.

The Athabasca Falls:

On the way:

Tangle Falls:

 

One of the must-dos in the area is the Athabasca Glacier, where you are driven in an oversized Snow-Bus out onto the glacier for a chance to experience it first-hand. Most people wondered if it would be like a sheet of ice; even though it was more like snow on top, some areas were fairly slippery if you weren't wearing boots, and it didn't take long for the cold to creep up through the soles of your shoes. It was a fun adventure nonetheless. We had also done this excursion when we were here those 27 years ago, and it was shocking to see how far the glacier had receded since then. We were driven quite a ways further up the glacier; where we had boarded the Snow-Bus before is now a parking lot and not very close to the glacier at all.

OMG! They were both here!!

One of the little melted pools on the glacier. Looks very cold!
Some people were collecting plastic cups of water and
tasting it, but there's lots of dust and dirt that can get
washed into the water now.

Along the highway:

The Weeping Wall, where there is always some
water seeping down the rock face

The Sunwapta River

The Angel Glacier, on back side of Mount Edith Cavell

The view from our lunch stop. It just looked so fitting with the flag
and the mountain beyond,

Peyto Lake:

  

Bow Lake

Larry with Olivia and Jack, fellow Mountaineers and
new friends.

Simpson's Num-Ti-Ja Lodge.The lodge has
been around since the mid-1800s as a rest stop
for horseback and horsedrawn travellers.
It is still owned by the Simpson family.

As were were motoring along the highway, we noticed a couple of cars at the side of the road and all of us looked to see what the attraction was. It turned out to be a large Black Bear foraging in the trees near the road. Our driver stopped as quickly as he could and even managed to reverse back a little so we could all get a look. Of course, there had to be a couple of young women get out of their car for a closer look - doesn't everyone do that with a wild bear 30 feet away??? Eventually he must have realized he was the centre of attention because he turned and lumbered back into the woods.

Lake Louise:

When we arrived at the Chateau Lake Louise, we were advised that we had been given an upgrade into the Gold Level, where the rooms have the best views and there is a private lounge serving canapes and breakfast. Wow! If it were to happen anywhere, this was a good place. The room and the view certainly didn't disappoint.

Dinner at the Walliser Stube, a Swiss-style restaurant in the hotel. Cheese fondue, Chateaubriand and Chocolate fondue for dessert.

This was the view at 8:00 in the morning. Never thought we could
get a photo like this! Then one of our travel mates showed us
one he had take at 6:30 with the orange and pink shades of
sunrise in the clouds reflected in the lake. He could sell that one!!

The Drive to Banff

There is an interesting story to the Spiral Tunnels outside of Banff. The Canadian Pacific Railway needed to set rails to get down the Big Hill with a 4.5 grade, that means for every 100 feet in horizontal distance, the elevation drops 4.5 feet. That's pretty steep. They built it anyway in 1884, and found that they had trouble keeping trains on the track by the time they reached the bottom, as they were going too fast to stop. As an alternative, in 1907 they started building an ingenious tunnel system through 2 mountains; essentially a figure 8, the first loop in Cathedral Mountain and the second in Mount Ogden. From the Spiral Tunnel viewpoint you can see the train, if it is long enough, in 3 places at once: going into Cathedral Mountain, coming out of the first spiral ABOVE where it went in, and then along in front of the viewpoint as it heads toward Mount Ogden and the second spiral. Ultimately this reduced the grade to 2.1%, quite safe for trains. A good thing, too, as we will be going through the Spiral Tunnels once we leave Banff. The Rocky Mountaineer is the only passenger train to use this track.

In this picture you can just see the train's engine coming back out
of the tunnel at the top

Here you see the train crossing itself. If we could have got the photo,
we could also have seen it cross along below us.

Emerald Lake:

The Natural Bridge:

We finally reached the Banff Springs Hotel around 5:00. We've seen the hotel from afar and, of course, seen photos, but it is a lot larger than it looks. We weren't lucky enough to be upgraded this time since the hotel was full for the weekend. Oh, well. We had dinner in the German/Swiss restaurant (no fondue this time) last night and, for a real change of pace, will be having Italian tonight. We took a walk along the Bow River and through town this morning.

Bow Falls:

The Bow River as we crossed the footbridge into town:

Back to the train tomorrow. We'll see what kind of sights there are on the way to Kamloops.