Wednesday, September 6th - Arriving in Vancouver.

Due to the shift to Pacific Time, we were up before 6 a.m. and shortly thereafter off to have breakfast in the diner with Lois. The sun rose while we were eating and we thoroughly enjoyed the scenery flowing by during our last meal in the diner.

After breakfast we walked to the back of the train and took some pictures of the tracks receding into the mountains behind us. The train worked its way further and further into the Cascades and finally cut through the main ridge of the mountains by using the 7.7-mile "Cascade Tunnel". We were in the tunnel for what seemed like the longest time, at least 15 minutes by my watch, and the conductor later told us that it is one of the longest tunnels in the world.

Coming out of the tunnel we started down the west slope of the Cascades toward the Pacific coast. The trees were noticeably taller and more densely packed on the west slope of the Cascades, probably because that slope receives more precipitation each year. We reached Puget Sound at the town of Everett that lies due north of Seattle and then followed the shoreline south. During this last stretch the mountains of the Olympic Peninsula were visible to the west across the clear blue waters of the sound and we remembered our drive out to the tip the peninsula during Wanderung 6. We finally arrived in Seattle and retrieved our luggage, which was thankfully all there, and rested a bit before taking a bus to Vancouver.

The 4-hour bus trip up to Vancouver was scenic once we got out of Seattle. However, I fell asleep shortly after we reached the Interstate and turned north, so I can't give many details except to say that whenever I stirred from my doze and looked out the window it looked pretty. We had to grab our luggage at the border and trundle it through the Canadian Customs folks. Fortunately they seemed to have forgotten the pepper spray incident, so we were just passed through rather than having our luggage taken apart and searched. We continued on the bus to Vancouver where we found the Regis Hotel in the heart of downtown. Monika and I pulled our wheelies about 14 blocks uphill to get to our hotel while Lois, Phyllis, and Bill took a taxi that cost them only $8 Canadian. It took us a good hour of sweat to save the $2-3, and boy did we feel silly.

The St. Regis was a historic pre World War I hotel. Lois's room was big and had two windows and a view of the water. Our room was nice and had one window that looked out on a busy street. Phyllis and Bill's room was a dark basement room that had only 1 window and that looked out on an interior ventilation area. From this description you can guess who made the reservations and who got the air shaft! The St. Regis Hotel did have, thank goodness, free WiFi! So I sent email messages to our kith and kin informing them that we had arrived safely and were so far all healthy aside from sleep deprivation in my case and Monika's back spasms from hauling the wheelies so far up hill.

Later that afternoon we walked with Bill and Lois down to the cruise ship terminal, which turned out to be located in the Canada Place convention center. It seemed vaguely familiar, and I finally figured out that we had visited Canada Place while taking a Volksmarch during our previous visit to Vancouver in the 1990s when we crossed Canada by train. That train trip, by the way, was about 4,000 miles and took a couple days longer than the Amtrak trip from Washington, D.C., to Seattle but was an equally unique and pleasant experience. From the promenade around the cruise ship terminal we had a great view of the harbor, and all the maritime traffic. I was particularly suprised by the almost constant stream of float planes taking off and landing just offshore. Returning to the St. Regis, I tried to catch up on the journal and Monika processed pictures before we dropped off for the night.