This is officially the start of my birthday month so I hope you will all forgive me because I made a mistake yesterday. It turns out we did not see a caribou yesterday but rather an elk. I have updated the post but I wanted to make sure that the 7 people who might have read the blog (okay maybe I am inflating the numbers of people who read the blog) would know the truth. We met a naturalist, Denise, on the train today and she set us straight. Okay, forgive me and let’s move on.
After our elk sighting yesterday we headed up the gondola at Banff. In about an 8 minute trip we went from about 5,100 feet to about 7,100 feet. We expected it to very cold at the top so we brought our heavy coats. When we arrived it was so warm people were wearing t-shirts and shorts. We walked around and saw some incredible views. This is my favorite:
Today was the first day of our excursion on the Rocky Mountaineer train. We were instructed to have our bags ready at 5:45 AM and bodies downstairs and ready to board the bus to the train station at 6:45 AM. You have to remember, that we are still on California time which is one hour earlier than Alberta so they were demanding a lot of us. We did make it to the rendezvous spot as requested and when we arrived at the train station we were greeted by this:
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The train arrived and looked magnificent.
We saw all sorts of wonderful sights on the 307 mile trip (or 495 km if you prefer) from Banff, Alberta to Kamloops, British Columbia. The sights included beautiful waterways, trees, mountains, trees, horses, trees, osprey, trees, cows, trees and did I mention………………. trees. But the most amazing sight we saw were people. All along the train route we saw Canadian after Canadian waving to us. It was as if we were the Canadian national hockey team having just won the Olympic gold medal and they were greeting us on our victory tour. It was an incredible sight. It is one thing for people in the hotels and various tourist attractions to be nice but mere strangers on the side of the road to stop what they were doing just to welcome us with a wave of the hand was truly inspiring. You might recall I loved Australia in part because, unlike much of the world, Australians genuinely seemed to like Americans. I think the Aussies might need to take a back seat to the Canadians.
Although I had a great time on day one of the train trip and was very happy with all the great things we saw, my favorite sight was captured by my daughter Lindsay in this picture.
Looking forward to day 2 on the train. I would love to read your comments.
Robert Reiss Travel Blog and Other Ramblings 