Midwest Adventures: Traverse City Home To Great Fly Fishing Rivers
The Victoria Island Harbor houses boats just off the Puget Sound. (Photo By Bud Phillips)
Plenty To See Around Seattle
Trip By Train Includes Visit To Nearby Vancouver
By ROBERT "BUD" PHILLIPS Special to the Journal & Topics Newspapers
Once a year my wife, Kelli, and I attend our church's national convention of The Church of the New Jerusalem. It is always held at a university. You don't have to be attending a convention or be a student to stay at a university. In fact, if you have children nearing college age, this can be a great way to introduce them to campus life. In addition, universities have activities and places available that appeal to teenagers and the price is right.
This year the convention was held at the University of Washington in Seattle. We decided to take the Amtrak train, the Empire Builder. It is a 48-hour trip and you can board the train in Glenview.
It was nice to travel without going through the airport security gauntlet. We booked the small sleeper room with the bathroom down the hall. We went by train in Sweden once in a room with a bathroom. But it was literally a toilet in the middle of the room. The bigger sleeper room has a separate bathroom in the sleeping quarters. I wish we had taken the bigger room, not because of the bathroom but because the beds were bigger. The small roomette was OK for sitting and reading, but at night it turns into bunk beds. The bottom bunk is big enough. The top bunk is only two feet from the ceiling. I am a little claustrophobic and the top bunk was too close to the ceiling and freaked me out.
There was an activity for the cabin passengers each day, champagne the first day and wine tasting the next day. Sleeper car passengers get first picks for dinner times. We had dinner with strangers at each meal but that was very interesting unless you're the shy type. For people staying in sleeper cars, the meals were included. The food was well prepared with several choices. Passengers can go in the observation car where they have national park volunteers who give lectures on the scenery/geography. There is a bar and a snack stand. One night a couple of talented passengers sang and played the guitar. The train makes stops along the way.
On the longer stops passengers can get off and walk around. The train goes through Glacier National Park. It dropped us off in the middle of Seattle. The staff was amazing; they seem to work 24/7. They wait tables, make beds, clean, and are generally available to help passengers as needed. When you talk to them about how hard they work, they all say they love their job. I enjoyed the train but was glad we flew back.
Washington University is now tops on my list of academia for "bread and circuses". The campus is located in the downtown area. The campus has its own tourist attractions, i.e., herb gardens, a museum, fountains and water sports on Lake Washington. It is located near a shopping district that is full of interesting restaurants, shops, and other attractions. The dining hall is like a food court decorated in Starbucks style. The food was excellent. There was one large bathroom per wing of the dorm, which was a problem. Maybe that would be OK for students with different class schedules but for a bunch of guys going to the same meeting, it was standing room only. The rooms are clean and they offer optional fans, clock radios, reading lamps and other amenities at no extra charge that other universities don't offer.
The landscaping for the campus was designed by Frederick Law Olmstead who designed the landscaping for Daniel Burnham's Chicago plan. In Seattle, he designed the plan for the Alaska Yukon Pacific Exposition in 1909. The exposition grounds later became part of the university campus.
We traveled from the U of W by Duck, ala the Dells, for a tour of the city and Lake Washington. Who would have thought that World War II amphibious landing crafts would become the backbone of American tourism industry? I can't help but imagine that any enemy would not immediately surrender when faced with a Duck full of middle-aged Americans singing "Ninety-Nine Bottles of Beer on the Wall".
From the comfort of our Duck we saw Seattle from Lake Washington. It is surrounded by hills with expensive houses. People live on the water in pricey houses floating on logs. Sea planes land among the yachts. It is unique because of its geography. Seattle is set on a lake surrounded by large hills near the ocean. You can see most of the buildings in the city from almost anywhere in the metropolitan area.
My wife Kelli's aunt and uncle drove us to Mt. Rainier. It is 70 miles from Seattle. There are 21 glaciers on the mountain, more than the rest of the other glaciers in the rest of the state combined. It is an easy scenic trip about half way up the mountain. There is a very modern display near the lodge explaining the history, geography and the wild life of the mountain.
We went by taxi to a large catamaran called the Victoria Clipper that took us to the island of Victoria across Puget Sound into British Columbia. There is a short session with customs but it is nothing like what happens at the airport. It is a rather expensive three-hour tour but it is a scenic trip on a very luxurious ship and we couldn't find a better/cheaper alternative. It lands right at the center of the city of Victoria.
Victoria reminds me of towns in Harbor Country in Michigan with palm trees. Yes, palm trees grow in British Columbia. There are plenty of trendy restaurants and the waterfront always has street performers and people selling mostly native Canadian crafts. You can walk to almost anything in the city.
The big attractions on Victoria are the gardens. They are mostly outside the city and you need to find transportation to get there. The Butchart Gardens is the most famous floral destination. Originally it was a Portland cement pit and the estate of the Butchart family. Mrs. Butchart started the gardens as a personal project to beautify the grounds. It is a testament to what can be done with a manufacturing eyesore---a cement pit.
We left Victoria Island by bus, an odd way to leave an island. The bus drives onto a huge ferryboat that holds other buses, cars and semitrailer trucks. The Ferry goes to Vancouver and the bus took us to the center of the city. We went from there to the City Center Metro Hilton. We anticipated walking to downtown Vancouver's activities. The problem was it wasn't in Vancouver. Whoops, wrong city center. It was in a large suburb outside of Vancouver next to a very large shopping mall. It was sort of like going to Chicago and ending up in Schaumburg. Only Schaumburg is nicer than this Canadian suburb.
It took us a while to realize how far we were from the real city. By that time, we decided it was a nice hotel and we would make the most of it, so we booked a tour. They picked us up at no extra cost. It was Canada Day, which is the Canadian version of the 4th of July except they don't celebrate defeating the British. I guess they celebrate keeping the British. They celebrate it rather like we do in the U.S.: picnics, parades and fireworks. We viewed Stanley Park, which is a 400-acre park with waterfront views, bike trails, cricket pitches and totem poles. Totem poles were popular in all three places that we visited.
Vancouver has the third largest Chinatown in North America. There are almost as many sushi bars here as Seattle has Starbucks. I know sushi is not Chinese but it appears they did not get the memo. I like Sushi so I was happy. The Chinese district extended to our remote suburban hotel that had a food court with 23 oriental restaurants. The traditional Chinatown is rather run down and mostly serves the tourists. We then went to a converted industrial district in Vancouver called Granville Island. It reminded me of Old Town in the 1960s in Chicago but much bigger and safer.
We ended the trip with an outing to the "Look-Out" which is the Vancouver version of the Sears Tower. It is a tall building on a high hill. It probably has a view as impressive as you can get in Chicago from the top of the "Big Willi". In less an six months, the Winter Olympics will be in Vancouver. Most of the Olympic buildings, signs, and other venues are already completed.
The 10 days that we were in the Northwest in July were always around 70 degrees and sunny. I guess Seattle is often damp. It isn't rainy but it is drizzly and misty.
We flew home and on this trip we had traveled by train, car, two types of ships, amphibious landing vehicle, bus and plane. If we had taken a rickshaw ride in Chinatown we would have almost every form of transportation covered.