Cool things to do and other things of interest.

[zendancer]

This has nothing to do with anything spiritual, per se, but I thought it might be fun to start a thread about stuff that may not be common knowledge, but might be interesting to others.


I hadn't been skiing in several years, and I was having dinner with Carol, a friend who at one time skied a lot, and his girlfriend. The girlfriend, who was not a skier, mentioned that she had seen a newspaper article about a ski train that carried skiers from Denver to the Winter Park ski resort about two hours west of Denver. That sounded cool to me, so I suggested a trip to Denver to check it out and go skiing. I went online and discovered that there's a daily train from Chicago to California, called the California Zephyr. The ski train only runs on the weekends, and is only for trips to Winter Park. I wanted to go in the middle of the week when flights to Denver are cheaper, so I began to read about the Zephyr. I thought, "Why not take the Zephyr to WP for a few days of skiing, and then get back on the Zephyr and ride it to Salt Lake City and go skiing for a few more days at Park City?" I thought a train trip through the mountains in the winter would be tons of fun.

AAR, the girlfriend dropped out due to other commitments, but our daughter and her husband decided to join the three of us, and she made most of the arrangements. We flew to Denver, took the light rail system from the airport to the downtown Union Station ($10.50/person), and spent the night in Denver to help us get acclimated to the altitude. Carol and I also took Diamox to speed up the acclimatization process because although Denver is only 5000 feet above sea level, WP is 9000 feet above sea level, and the highest lift at WP rises to 12,000 feet.

The following morning we boarded the Zephyr at 8AM and the two-hour ride to WP was an amazing experience and cost $24/per person. Although Amtrak is part of our decrepit American infrastructure, and the engines and cars have an average age of 30 years, the ride was still lots of fun. The tracks wind back and forth in huge ess turns as they go toward Boulder and the Flatirons, and the views are spectacular. We saw at least a hundred elk, massive rock formations that towered above the train, and went through 41 tunnels, including the extremely-long Moffat Tunnel. For anyone who's interested in an interesting train ride in the states, I can highly recommend it.


On weekends, a special ski train takes skiers to WP, then parks on a side track, and returns to Denver in the afternoon. The Zephyr does not stop in WP. It stops in Fraser, about two miles beyond WP, and then continues on towards SLC and eventually California. This story will continue, but I'll have to break it up into sections because for some reason long posts often cause this computer to freeze up.

[zendancer]

ZD's ski trip continued:

The five of us rented an AirB&B in Fraser, and we travelled back and forth to WP and various restaurants via a local free bus system that's quite dependable. Carol no longer skis, so she stayed home with books and youtube for entertainment. The rest of us went to WP. All of us had skied in the past, but I hadn't skied in about 6 years, and my contractor friend hadn't skied in 12 years. My daughter and her husband signed up for an all-day ski lesson because their past skiing experience was relatively limited. As we got on the first lift on the first day, my friend and I agreed that we should start off on blue runs, and not do anything more difficult than that until we could determine what shape we were in and how we felt.---hahahahahahaha

Not only had my friend not skied in 12 years, but he had gained at least 75 pounds in those years, and had not been exercising regularly. The snow was great, but as we went down the first blue cruisng run, I was watching the signage and followed the run that we had started. My friend wasn't watching the signage, and at a fork in the run we separated. We therefore both ended up at different lifts at the bottom of our runs. I called him on his phone and he agreed to meet me back at the top because both of our lifts supposedly exited near each other at the top. After exiting my lift at the top, I ended up downhill about two hundred yards from his lift, so I called and told him where I was and how to rejoin me. I waited and waited, but he didn't show up. Unbeknownst to me, he had decided to go off on his own in order to test his long-ago skills (or to test his manhood). He therefore set off on a blue ski run labeled "Sober Englishman." After cruising down that easy slope a short distance, he veered off onto a black mogul ski run labeled "Drunken Frenchman." You can't make this stuff up! Drunken Frenchman had no soft snow and was an ice-covered mogul run so steep that I would never have considered venturing onto it unless it was totally groomed. He made it down the slope about twenty feet before he fell hard and shattered all of the cartilage on his right shoulder. He apparently fell several more times before he could get to the bottom, and I, frankly, don't know how he even got down that icy cliff-like slope without taking his skis off.

He met me an hour later and said with a humorous but painful grin, "As you know, testosterone causes brain damage!" I fully agreed because Drunken Frenchman ended his vacation, and he was forced to leave and fly home. He was unable to lift his right arm after that, and Ibuprofen thereafter became his best friend. I skied until lunch, and then helped him check in his skis and return to our condo to gather his belongings for a shuttle ride back to Denver and a flight out.

To be continued:

[zendancer]

Ski trip cont:

The Zephyr is notoriously bad for staying on schedule, and this situation was made much worse than usual on our trip because of the recent floods in Nebraska and other central states. Apparently, many tracks and bridges were underwater, and that required long detours and the use of some borrowed tracks belonging to the Union Pacific Railway. We were lucky on the initial train ride to Fraser/Winter Park, but not so lucky on the next leg of the trip from Fraser to Salt Lake City. We were supposed to get on the train at 10AM, but at 9AM we got a text telling us that our train was running two hours late, and would leave at noon. That was no problem because we didn't have to be out of the AirB&B condo til noon, but at 11AM we got a text telling us that the train would be four hours late, and the next hour we were told that it would be five or six hours late. This resulted in our sitting in the Fraser train station room for six hours.

Because the trip to SLC takes 13 hours from Fraser, we switched our coach seats to sleeper accomodations, thinking that it would be fun to sleep while crossing the desert from Grand Junction to SLC. As it turned out, our train was 8 hours late, and we finally boarded at 6PM and didn't arrive in SLC til after 6AM the next day. Nevertheless, the first few hours of daylight on the train were worth the wait, and we saw hundreds of elk and thousands of mule deer and mountain goats. The train winds through the mountains and canyons of Colorado, and the views from the two-story glass observation cars are terrific. At times the train goes very slowly because of the danger of falling rock, and the necessity of the engineers to scout the tracks ahead for any debris that may be on the tracks. The walls of granite are so high that it looks as if rocks could fall straight down through the train cars, and apparently avalanches and rockfall are a continual problem. We passed dozens of miles of utility poles with wires running on insulated pegs horizontally about a foot apart. If a rock falls and breaks a wire, whoever monitors the continuity of the electric circuitry of the wiring can pinpoint where that has happened and send a crew to physically remove the rock from the tracks. This can add a bit of excitement to the trip, and in Oregon this Winter one train was snowbound for three days due to an avalanche that required men with chainsaws and snow-moving machines to clear the tracks.

The nice thing about sleeper accomodations is that they come complete with a full dinner as part of the ticket price, and having dinner on the train can be another enjoyable experience. Not only was the food good, but sipping a glass of wine while looking down on the Colorado River in the gorge below the train was definitely worth the small additional cost.

The sleeper compartments are very compact, and I chose the upper bunk. I saw that there was a harness hanging from the ceiling that clips into the side of the bunk, but I had no idea that I'd actually need the thing! haha. As it turns out, the upper bunk sways a great deal more on sharp curves than the lower bunk and several times during the night the harness caught me as I rolled toward the aisle with the tilt of the car. Not much sleep, but definitely interesting!


The following day we rented a car and motored up to Park City from SLC, and for people who've never been to Park City, I can highly recommend a visit. It's a beautiful town with great restaurants and lots of shops and galleries to tour. It also has a great bus system that's free, and the busses hit every pickup point every fifteen minutes. The city is extremely clean and very upscale (Ivanka was even there), and the ski lifts are located all along the main drag. Unfortunately, the weather was a touch too warm, so the slopes were a bit too icy in the morning and a bit too slushy in the afternoon. For that reason I only skied one day, but our daughter and her husband drove over to the Alta ski resort where the snow conditions were much better due to cooler temps on that side of the mountain.

After returning home, I discussed the trip with several people who had never heard about it, and we decided that a fun excursion sans skiing might be to get on the train at Denver, ride it non-stop to Grand Junction, and then get off and fly home. For anyone flying on points it would be a cheap thrill--probably less than $200 including Uber fares and food along the way (more if a sit-down meal on the train is desired).

[laughter]

Epic! Enjoyed the read, thanks for taking the time to write it.

[zendancer]

For those who're interested in these sorts of things, here's another trip story. Carol and I had never been on a cruise, so we thought it might be fun to take a cruise up the inside passage to Alaska from Vancouver. We chose the Holland America Line (which was relatively economical--$3000 total), and signed up for a 7-day cruise on the Nieuw Amsterdam up to Glacier Bay and back to Vancouver. We flew to Seattle where a bus from HAL picked us up and took us to the ship that was docked in Vancouver. Upon our return to Vancouver a bus took us back to Seattle and we spent two days in Bellevue, WA, an upscale suburb of Seattle, before flying home. A few notes:

1. The ship was about 1000 feet long and 11 stories tall. It carries up to 2100 guests and has a crew of about 1300. Most of the workers, waiters, stewards, etc. come from Indonesia, and they work non-stop for about 8 months before returning home.
2. The ship served a wide selection of standard food as well as ethnic cuisine from a different country every day. There are separate upscale dining areas for people who want to pay extra.
3. The ship generally cruised at a speed of about 22 mph, but slowed down in narrow channels and when entering and leaving ports.
4. This particular cruise stopped in Juneau, Glacier Lake, Skagway, and Ketchikan.
5. There are countless jewelry stores in all of the ports, and we later learned that 60% of them are owned by the cruise lines. I can't imagine why people would want to buy jewelry in a tourist-dominated area, but apparently a lot of people do this.
6. All of the excursions in port cost extra, but none of them appealed to us, so I can't report on those.
7. Passengers are allowed to bring one bottle of wine, each, on board, but all other drinks cost extra. The cruise lines offer a drink package for several hundred dollars per person, but one would almost need to be an alcoholic to justify the price.
8. Room prices depend upon the view, so the cheapest rooms have no windows at all. The next level up offers a porthole. The level above that offers a picture window. The level above that offers patio doors and a private verandah. Above that are luxury suites. We picked a room with a verandah, and the additional price seemed worth it.

Although the scenery was spectacular all the way, and although we saw humpback whales, orcas, porpoises, sea otters, and other fish, the thing I most enjoyed was the hour we spent close to the one active tidewater glacier in Glacier Bay. I had never been to an active glacier before, and the sounds coming from the glacier were amazing, as was the calving of the ice into the water. Listening to the variety of cracking/fracturing sounds from deep within the glacier made it obvious that the entire mass of ice is constantly in motion, and this particular glacier moves downhill about 8 to 15 feet each day, so ice is continually breaking off and crashing into the bay. It was worth the trip just to see and hear that thing up close and personal.

I had read about the Yukon Gold Rush in the past, but until we went to a National Park Service movie at a museum in Skagway, I never realized that it only lasted 2 years--from about 1898 to late 1899. Amazingly, the people who disembarked in Skagway during the rush then had to hike through snow and ice up steep terrain more than 500 more miles to get to the actual site of the gold strike. It's quite a story.

The biggest problem with cruising is the tendency to over-eat because food is always available and the variety of desserts is extensive. I mitigated that problem by climbing the stairways repeatedly and walking more than 6 miles each day around the ship. Carol did the same thing by clocking 4 miles each day in the fitness center.

Cruise liners are like playgrounds for older adults, and it felt similar in some ways to various assisted living facilities we've visited, but with more things to do. There's a casino, string quartet that plays classical music, a piano bar, a rock and roll band, various evening shows, educational programs, cooking seminars, computer seminars, naturalist presentations, and the sightseeing and excursions offered in the ports (everything from train rides to helicopter rides).

One of the more interesting aspects of cruising is the people one meets in the dining room (if sharing a table) or at particular events. On our ship there were not too many young people and only a few children, but we met a lot of interesting adults from many different walks of life. We had dinner with people from Australia, Britain, Canada, and China as well as several couples who lived in American towns with a population of less than 1000 people, and all of them had interesting stories to tell about their lives and their countries.

The price of a cruise can vary from a low of about $1200/person to many thousands of dollars/person, depending upon how one plans such a trip and how long the cruise lasts. Tricks of the trade include booking well in advance, flying on points, studying all the rules and regulations, and utilizing hotel credit card points for free nights in hotels both before and after the cruise. It also helps to read reviews online to get a good sense of what each cruise line offers and the approximate value that's offered. More info later.......