A Few Days In The Rockies

Note: This may be my last post until I return home. On the train I will only have internet access via my phone, and the signal will be intermittent.

Note 2: having problems uploading my photos to flickr, will try again in the morning

Shortly after my last post I began my first leg on the train back home. I was only on the train for slightly less than a full day, but it was a pretty good experience. Having my own room was excellent, it was nice to be able to have some time away from anyone where i could just sit and relax.

Most of the ride was at night, but there was still a good section through the day with some excellent views of the mountains. At lunch, we passed by Mount Robson, the highest peak in the Rockies.

We arrived in Jasper ahead of schedule, so I had to wait for a little while for my ride to arrive to the hotel. I’ve got a room at the Fairmont Jasper Park Lodge, and the hotel itself is excellent. As nice as the train room is, I must admit that the hotel room is slightly nicer. My first night at the hotel was fairly un-exciting, except for dinner. I ordered a Boar Bacon Wrapped Bison Tenderloin, which was fantastic, and then a Campfire S’mores Cheesecake for desert, which was also pretty fantastic.

This morning I slept in for a while in the spacious King bed. I just (and I do mean just) fit on the train bed, so I wanted to enjoy the King while it lasted. A little before noon I headed down to the front desk to see if it was possible to get on any day tours. Luckily I managed to get in on two tours, one this evening and another tomorrow morning.

I had a few hours to kill before the evening tour, so I wandered around the trail that circled the hotels private lake. Normally at this time of year one can rent skates and head out on the lake itself, but unfortunately it has been unseasonably warm here as well, and the ice on the lake wasn’t thick enough. The trail was quite nice tho, There were very few other people out on the trail, and the views were fantastic.

My evening tour was a hike around the Maligne Ice Canyon. During the rest of the year, there is a raging river flowing through this canyon, but in the winter the flow slows and the river freezes. Over the winter months, some extra unfrozen creeks empty into the canyon, and eventually the ice builds up. The tour starts at the top of the canyon and winds its way down to the river bed, when you double back into the canyon itself along the frozen riverbed. One can take the tour during the day or at night, but the night tour I was on was excellent. Normally the tours are quite busy, but I managed to be the only one on this particular tour. We used headlamps and flashlights to illuminate the ice columns left from the creeks emptying into the canyon. It was a bit hard to get photos in the darkness, but I believe a few turned out ok.

Tomorrow I have to get up early for a wildlife tour. Then it’s back onto the train for the rest of the week before I arrive back home. I’ve uploaded a good chunk of pics from the last few days up on my flickr page, feel free to take a look.

Until Next Time VanCity…

Well the last couple days have wound down my olympic experience quite well. 3 gold medals yesterday along with a fantastic men’s curling game, and then an thrilling hockey final today. Canada has not only won the most golds at these games, but the most golds ever won by a single country. We may not have the highest medal count, but I think that’s an amazing accomplishment, especially to achieve on home soil.
Right now I’m sitting in a park overlooking Canada Hockey Place and BC Place. You can hear cheers from people walking by, as well as echos of roars from within the city. I won’t get to stay for the evenings festivities as my train leaves in a couple hours, but right now I can’t think of a better way to end this chapter of my trip.

Way to go Canada, we need to do this again some time.

Spotlights

Quick post, just found the site that lets you control the spotlights in English Bay. These are the lights I took photos of from the bridge my second night here.

No More Events

Yesterday was the last early morning for the duration of my trip (hopefully).  Women’s Curling was packed, took quite a while to get in.  Made it to my seat just a couple minutes before the match started.  The match was between Canada and Switzerland, and was much closer than it needed to be.  Few to many risky shots I thought, but Canada pulled out some fantastic shots just when they needed them.

After game, it was back to downtown to find a pub and celebrate a successful Olympic trip.  I would absolutely love to go to another Olympics sometime, but if I did I think I’d try to diversify my ticket purchases more, and spread out the games a bit more.  Still, I have no complaints for my experience this time around.

After a few pints, I headed back to the house to see what everyone else was doing.  We watched some games on the TV for a while, then a few of us went out to the waterfront to watch the nightly fireworks display.  The display was pretty good, aside from a few odd lengthy pauses.  It was an excellent official end to my live events.

Today I spent a good chunk of time sleeping in the morning, and then headed down to the VIA Rail station.  I wanted to not only know where I’d need to go on Sunday, but also wanted to find out if there was bag storage anywhere.  My train on Sunday leaves a few hours after the end of the gold medal Men’s Hockey game, and I don’t want to have to drag my bag with me through what I’m sure will be pretty massive crowds.

Right now I’m watching the Gold Medal game for Women’s Curling at the house, then I think we’re heading out somewhere to watch the Canada/Slovakia hockey game.  I was supposed to go to the final Victory Ceremony tonight, but it starts at the exact same time as the hockey game, so nuts to that.

I’ve been posting pictures up on my flickr page the last few days, even though I haven’t placed any in my posts here.  I’ll try to get back into the photo-in-post habit over the next few posts though, now that I’m not so rushed getting from event to event.

Pushing Through The Wall

Yesterday was a fairly rough day, despite not doing that much.  Woke up early again for a 9 a.m. Women’s Curling round.  The curling venue is a half-hour bus ride away, and it normally takes about a half-hour to get through security.  This time however, it seemed everyone decided to show up at the same time and the line to get through security was huge.  By the time I made it to my seat the matches had already started.

After curling I went downtown to find some lunch and try to kill some time, as my next event wasn’t until 9 p.m.  Came back to the house after lunch, and sat around for a bit before watching the Canada/Germany hockey game.  By the time the game finished I was feeling crazy tired, and almost decided on skipping the evening game, but then changed my mind.

The evening game was Slovakia vs. Norway, and turned out to be a pretty interesting game.  Just a few minutes into the first period, one of the Slovakian players got completely smoked by a Norwegian.  His helmet came off, and he didn’t move much once he hit the ice.  The whole place went quiet, eventually they had to take him off the ice in a stretcher.  It took them another 5 or 10 minutes to scrape the blood out of the ice as well, definitely a brutal hit.

After the game, I had to walk by the big HBC building on the way to the subway station.  They have an ‘Official Olympic Superstore’ there, and normally there is a line around the block to get in.  Middle of the night in the rain though, is apparently the time to go if you want to beat the crowds.  There were plenty of people inside, but no line, was able to just walk right in.

So far today I’ve just been sitting around, taking some time to relax before my last couple events.  I have my last hockey game tonight at 9 again, and then my last curling tomorrow morning at 9.  After that, I have a ticket to the final victory ceremony on friday, and then I’m done.  Feels odd to be so close to done, only another week and a half before the trip is over.  Definitely looking forward to some relaxing time on the train next week.  Certainly going to need some time to unwind before I head back to work.

….And We’re Back

Last couple of days have been pretty busy, have a fair amount to recap.  Saturday I had 2 hockey games to go to.  They were back to back, but I still had to go back out and around through the security gates again.  Or so I thought until I was leaving the second game and overheard someone saying there was a specific gate to go to where you could re-enter directly for the next game.

The games themselves were pretty good, but not up to the same intensity from the crowd as the other game.  It was still pretty loud and energetic though, and both games were great.  After the games, I met up with some of the other people in the house to check out more of downtown.  They hadn’t been down yet, so it was certainly an experience for them.  The crowds have gotten much larger over the last few days, and being sat. night it was especially packed.

We went and found dinner at a pub, after first checking out the Flame.  The changes they’ve made to the fence definitely make it easier to get in for a good picture of the Flame.  Not only is the fence closer, and a viewing platform available, but the fence being closer has opened up the sidewalk quite a bit, making it easier to get around.

Robson Sqaure and Granville however, are not very easy to get around.  Especially when you’re in a group.  We kept getting seperated, finding each other, then getting seperated again.  After an hour or so, we gave up on downtown, and headed back to the house.

The next day, I finally had a good sleep-in as I hadn’t any events that day.  Around lunch I headed out to meet up with my (2nd?, 3rd?) cousin, Erin.  She took me out to the Capilano Suspention Bridge, which was a pretty cool place.  Big suspension bridge across a river gorge, along with a platform walk through the trees.  The weather was perfect again, and it was nice to get out of the city for a little while.

After the bridge, we went back to the city and walked around Stanley Park/English Bay for a while.  There were a few more inukshuk’s set up along the coast here as well, but not nearly as many as by Canada Hockey Place.  The walk was great, but I had to cut it short so I could make it back to the house before the Canada/U.S. hockey game started.  I had a ticket to the Victory Ceremony for that night, but decided to skip it for the game.  And that’s about all I’m going to say about the game…

Today I got to sleep in a bit again, and then Zach gave me a ride to where I was to catch the bus back up to Cypress for the Men’s Aerials Qualification.  I apparently grabbed the really really early bus, because by the time we got there, there was almost a 3 hour wait before the qualifications began.  There were far less steps this time though, (only one flight of stairs) and the speaker system was way better than for Men’s Halfpipe.  The qualifications themselves were great as well; the annoucers explained what each type of trick was, and there were many good runs.

On the bus back from Cypress, I recieved a message from Gail about our 5th gold medal, followed by an annoucement from the bus driver of the same.  Cheers on the bus, and pretty soon we made it back to the drop-off point.

Tomorrow I get up early again for some curling, and then a late hockey game (not the canada game unfortunately), so I’ll be turning in early again.  I’ll set some more photo’s to upload before I head to bed though, so be sure to check my flickr page.  When I get free time on the train I’ll have to add more photo links back into these posts.

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Another Pub, Another Gold

Sorry for no post last night, was crazy wiped from running around. Yesterday was another early morning event, womens curling. The match was good, canada wasn’t playing but there were other excellent teams playing. After curling I longer break between events than the day before, so went downtown and grabbed some lunch. Downtown is definitely starting to be packed with more people; it’s getting harder to move around but the vibe is fantastic.
After lunch I headed over to Canada Hockey Place for my first Men’s Hockey game. Czech Republic was playing against Latvia, and while I was sure there would be lots of fans, I was still surprised at the level of excitment. Fans for both sides went crazy at every shot. I had no idea who to cheer on, and I think others felt the same because the entire house erupted in cheers at any goal from either side.
After hockey I found another pub for dinner and watched most of the evening womens curling on tv. Then they switched over to skeleton luge when we won our 4th gold.
After that it was back to the house to crash. Today I have 2 more hockey games, and then I’m meeting up with my hosts to check out more of downtown. Chances are I’ll have to do another post tomorrow morning, but in the meantime I’ve posted some pics from the last couple days up on flickr. Follow the links on the right to check them out.