Winding Down

In France, the nation breaks for vacation on Bastille Day, July 14, and returns to work after Assumption Day, August 15. Today is not only the last day of national vacation for the French, but it feels like the end of my summer adventures, too. We are not home yet. It will be a few days still before we are in Los Angeles. But we are definitely on the way back.

Ellen and I started the day with a dog walk. She pointed out the local home restorations she likes and the gardens in the neighborhood that she admires. Her neighborhood, just north of Division in Southeast Portland, is a fascinating mix of houses or different eras and in different stages of restoration. There are Craftsmen homes which have been completely renovated right next to post-war bungalows which look exactly like they must have in 1965. The former often have elaborate gardens and mortar-free brick walls. The latter usually have a grass, a couple foundation shrubs, and a few geraniums lined up in a perfect row. Ellen stopped in a local bakery and picked up some breakfast pastries while I stood outside with our three dogs. 

Ellen had to go to her office to meet with a former student. Mike needed to return their rental car, so the three of us went downtown. John planned to meet up with us later. Mike and I went to Powell books. I was tempted to buy a few things there, but mindful that we have far more books at home than bookshelves just dutifully pulled out my phone and added them to my requested list at the library.

Not without some confusion, John finally met up with us near Pioneer Square. We went to a great Cuban restaurant for lunch.

We dropped Mike off at home to get some important work done, and John and I went to the nursery with Ellen.

She bought a couple big bags of some kind of organic soil enrichment. We dropped them off in her garden, and then went off to look at Elk Rock, another garden she had always wanted to see. This garden is also known as the “Bishop’s Close” because it is on the grounds of a historic home which currently houses the offices of the Episcopal Diocese of Oregon. The house and garden are just south of Portland near the town of Lake Oswego. The house and garden have a fantastic view of Mount Hood. The mountain is visible from the opening between the trees.

There is a chapel attached to the house and also an area for outside worship.

We went back to the house and picked up Mike to go to see The Help. John and I had listened to the book in the car, and Ellen had also read the novel. So it was interesting to see how the book would be adapted to the screen. Generally we thought they had done a pretty good job and enjoyed it. Outside the downtown theater is a small park where people can play chess with some pretty big chess pieces.

Keeping up the Dixie theme, we went up to Mississippi Street to Miss Delta, a southern restaurant. The food was over quite good, and I particularly enjoyed my crawfish boil. It was served on a piece of newspaper, traditional down in Cajun country.

Partying to Portland

We had to get a relatively early start today to Oregon. We’ll be staying in Portland for three days with my sister, and then we’ll be heading to Ashland, our last stop on this trip, for a couple days of theater. But before we left, John wanted to explore this historic hotel some more. We learned that the Davenport Hotel had been initially constructed in 1906 by a successful restaurateur named Louis Davenport. It cost well over 2 million dollars to build, an astronomical sum for those times. It was also tremendously successful, and it was the place to stay for any famous person who happened to be passing through Spokane. Alas, as the downtown faded in the 1950’s and 1960’s, so did the hotel. By the early seventies it had filed for bankruptcy; in the mid eighties plans were being made to demolish it. In 1994, Walt and Karen Worthy, local developers, bought it for little more than the construction cost ninety years earlier, and started the renovations.

Essentially they gutted the old building, saving all the historically significant items for reinstallation, and created a new hotel in the shell of the old. The lobby, shown below, was dismantled and then reinstalled.

The same was true for its most famous ballroom, the “Palace of the Doges.”

Bing Crosby is probably the most famous son of Spokane, and there are a number of places including a local theater named for him. The Davenport has an entire display case of Crosby memorabilia including his famous pipe.

After leaving Spokane, we drove south along US 395 and I 84 headed to Portland. Like most people, when I think of the Pacific Northwest, images of cedars and hemlocks dripping with moisture come to my mind. Yet half of the states of Washington and Oregon are arid, and many sections of both actually have rainfall so slight that they can be considered deserts. Not many people live out in the eastern counties, though there is substantial agriculture using irrigation. We passed through these parts of those states without stopping. Highway 84 follows the route of the Columbia River as that great waterway passes through the Oregon steppe. As you reach The Dalles, however, more trees begin to appear. After Hood River, where the highway gives a stunning view of the glacier-laden volcano, savanna gives way to coniferous forest. Suddenly you find yourself in the wet, lush northwest of common imagination.

Ellen and Mike, my sister and brother-in-law, had suggested we meet them in Corbett, just east of Portland, where a friend of theirs was having a party at his sister-in-law’s house. This seemed a bit like crashing to us, but they assured us that it was the kind of event where everybody was welcome to show up. And indeed it proved to be that.

Ellen and Mike were in a festive, summer party mood.

The four sisters who were sponsoring this party are all musicians, and there were live band performances using the garage as a stage. There was also a karaoke machine on the lawn. John was quite a hit as he did What’d I Say, the Ray Charles R & B hit from the late 1950’s.

There were lots of dogs around, and Eli was a perfect party guest. Edie was a bit more problematic. As we arrived a neighbor rode up on her horse. Edie is absolutely obsessed with horses, and it is not safe to let her off-leash anywhere around one. But on-leash, with all of the other dogs off-leash, she was a problem, too. So she spent a good portion of the time in the car. When we were pretty sure she had probably let the equine recollection lapse, we let her off and she was dutifully admired and petted. As the party was disbanding, one of the younger members in attendance, the son, I suppose, of one of the four women, tried to shoot a few baskets. He did not anticipate, however, that Eli would try to join him playing ball. It was pretty funny.

On the way to Portland, we stopped to take in a picture of of the Columbia Gorge.

Spokane

Our last day in Canada was sunny and warm. We had breakfast with our fellow guests at the bed and breakfast. I am sorry that I never took a picture of the breakfast table. Jonathan, the English innkeeper, has furnished not only this late-Victorian era home in furnishing appropriate to the era, but he also set the table in the same way. There were at least two forks and two spoons for the various breakfast courses, and there were goblets for water and glasses for juice in addition to the tiny porcelain tea cups. I felt like I was back at my grandmother’s house for Sunday dinner.

We drove south out of Calgary along the McLeod Trail. Despite the romantic western name, it is a hideous six lane highway lined with mini-malls and big box stores. But after a few miles of this urban sprawl, the city ended as abruptly as the mountains had the day before. We were suddenly surrounded by farm with vast field of wheat, hay, and what I think was sorghum. In the distance you can see the faint gray outlines of the Rockies. John snapped this photograph of a typical scene.

The highway brought us closer and closer to those mountains, and pretty soon we were leaving the plains behind and climbing into the foothills. We began to see some oil wells as well as signs demanding “Less Ottawa, More Alberta!” The roads curved as it slowly rose to the the Crowsnest Pass. There we stopped briefly to take a look at the town of Coleman where my friend Holly was born. Coleman was apparently once a big coal mining town, and you can see remnants of this history like the partially restored United Mineworkers hall as you drive through. The prosperity that oil and tourism have brought to other parts of Alberta does not seem to have reached Coleman, and the center of town is filled with empty and decaying storefronts and an abandoned movie theater.

We did see some signs of life in town. If you live outside of Los Angeles or another major city, deer are usually considered annoyances. But for these two Angelenos the deer on the lawn in Coleman might as well have been Roosevelt Elk.

Not long after we left Coleman we found ourselves back in British Columbia. The road followed the Kootenay river for a while before climbing over a pass and down to the city of Cranbrook. We had a reasonably short wait at the border at Kingsgate, and then drove down old US 95 towards Coeur d’Alene. This part of Idaho used to be the center of a white supremacist movement some years ago though I don’t know if that is still true. But before we came into town, Daniel the GPS in his mechanical English voice ordered us to “Take slip road right to I 90 west” and we had to obey.

Neither of us had been to Spokane for twenty years or so, and it somehow seemed bigger and a bit shabbier than either of us remembered. When we were planning the trip, the options for staying in Spokane with a dog were not that inspiring, and John discovered that for only about 50 dollars or so more than the other options we could get a deal at the Davenport, the oldest and most famous hotel in town. Since we had booked early, we had a large room next to the “Governor’s Suite” on the the top floor of the old building.

The dogs were looking miserable after eight hours in the car with only a break every two or three hours to find some bit of grass to answer nature’s call. So we took them for a walk through the downtown. I found a historic walking tour of Spokane on the internet, and I struggled to use it on the tiny screen of my iPhone. I did learn a few things from it. The tower below is the last remaining part of the old Great Northern Railroad station, once one of the grandest railroad stations in the west. The park surrounding it had been rail yards and industrial buildings, but these had been torn down in the early 1970’s for EXPO 74, Spokane’s effort to restart its decaying economy through hosting a world’s fair.

Spokane, I also learned from my iPhone tour, had originally been called Spokan Falls – the final e was added later – on an island surrounded by rapids in the river. The whites who settled this area feared the Nez Perce Indians and thought that the white water would provide some protection. Once Edison had found commercial uses for electricity, those same rapids channeled to provide hydroelectric current to power flour mills. There is still a small hydroelectric facility there run by Avista, the new corporate identity of the old Washington Water Power Company.

The federal department of Energy recently renewed Avista’s lease to run several hydroelectric projects on the river, but apparently they were required to do some environmental mitigation as part of this approval. As a result, much of the riverfront is under reconstruction and walls of chain link fence are everywhere. I suppose in a few years the Spokane waterfront will be a bit more appealing than we found it today.

Tomorrow we’re off to Portland.

Calgary

Since both Edie and Eli were pretty dirty after a couple of weeks frolicking in streams and mountains, we looked yesterday for a place to give them a bath. One of the places we came across on the Internet offered not only baths and clipped nails, but also extremely reasonable rates for day care. Since John and I wanted to do some museums and other places where we could not take the beasts, we thought it much better to leave them to play with other dogs than to stick them in the car in some underground parking garage. So our first order of the day today was to take them to the DogCity Dog Wash. The dogs were greeted at the door by about a dozen other canines including another black Bouvier! It only took Edie and Eli a moment before they were smiling and making play bows.

Leaving DogCity, we went back to our Bed and Breakfast where we had breakfast. One of the pleasures of staying at this kind of accommodation, as opposed to a motel or hotel, is that you get to meet the other guests at meals. We met an older man from Chester, England who had been cycling through the Rockies with his much younger Asian wife. There was also a couple from Switzerland who had been traveling through the the Yukon and the wild northern parts of BC. We had a very filling English style breakfast including bangers! Our host, Jonathan, was born and raised in Liverpool and he retains both his Scouser accent and his culinary heritage.

After breakfast, we planned a day of exploring central Calgary. The city of Calgary is laid out on a grid mostly, and the numbering system makes it pretty easy to not get lost. Avenues run east-west and streets north-south. The grid breaks the city into four quadrants:  northwest, southwest, northeast, and southeast. So a typical intersection, like that nearest to our bed and breakfast, would be 25 Ave SE & 2 St SE. Because of this, we felt pretty comfortable just walking around without fear of getting hopelessly lost. We walked towards an older neighborhood  still shaded with elm trees. On the second floor of one older home, we found someone who had placed this fiberglass statue on his porch.

Calgary was a cattle town before it became an oil town, and there is still a lot of nostalgia for its wild west heritage. The biggest event of the year is the Stampede, a rodeo which brings tens of thousand of visitors to the city at the beginning of each summer. The Calgary police also wear big black Stetson hats. So placing  a big cow on your porch is not quite as humorous as it might be somewhere else. It can be simply a recognition of your heritage.

Our first stop on this walk was an Alberta Heritage site, the home of Senator James Lougheed.

Lougheed was one of those bigger-than-life westerners. As a young lawyer, he moved to Calgary in the late nineteenth century when there was little else here than the main garrison of the RCMP. He married a half-Inuit woman whose father held an important position in the Hudson Bay Company. There was no province of Alberta at that time, and the northwest territories had only recently been ceded from the Hudson Bay Company to the Dominion of Canada. With boundless ambition and good connections, Lougheed prospered and not only built this house but led the drive to create the province and admit it to Confederation.

The building has suffered a lot of neglect over the years, and for several decades it was simply the blood donation site for the Red Cross. But recently a community foundation has taken it over and is slowly restoring the rooms to their original Edwardian state.

After leaving the Lougheed house, we walked towards the Bow River and the Eau Claire Market. I knew very little about the market other than the fact that it showed up routinely on lists of things to see and do in Calgary. We probably would have been disappointed in it – the market is sort of a fake enclosed market like the English built everywhere in the mid-nineteenth century – but outside the “Taste of Calgary” was going on. We have seen other of the “Taste of …” events and been unimpressed, but this one actually had real local restaurants and breweries proudly showing off their best stuff. We were sorry we had had such a big breakfast and were not hungry at all because everything looked and smelled so good!

There was also live music. A pretty decent Celtic band was playing when we were there.

The Taste of Calgary was being held on one of the many parks that line the edge of the Bow River. Nearby, in the middle of the river, is Prince’s Island, a charming park with stunning views of downtown Calgary.

Calgary gets a lot of winter and almost all the major buildings downtown are connection by the +15 walkways. This system, named for the fact that each walkway is about 15 feet above street level, allows you to walk through downtown in the middle of the winter in shirtsleeves. It’s can also be much faster than walking at street level because you never have to wait for a light to turn. Our destination was the Calgary Tower. Much like the Seattle Space Needle, the tower is simply a big observation platform with a rotating restaurant. John figured that it was not worth paying the money to go to the observation deck, but for the same price we could probably have a salad and a diet coke at the restaurant. Alas, when we arrived they told us that they had already taken all their reservations for lunch. So we passed on the tower, though not before John had a little opportunity to pose.

From the tower we went to the Glenbow Museum. This museum was founded by Eric Harvey, a Calgary man who had had either the foresight or the sheer dumb luck to purchase the mineral rights to much of the province before oil was discovered in 1947. After the resulting oil boom made him one of the richest men in Canada, if not the world, he decided to spend his fortune on a variety of philanthropic enterprises including a first-class ethnographic museum in his hometown. The Glenbow Museum not only has a huge collection of First Nations art and artifacts, but his similar items from countries throughout the world. In addition, it has spaces to special shows and traveling exhibits. We found the information on the Plains Indians quite informative.

There were also shows highlighting other ethnic and cultural groups from various parts of the world. There was one exhibit highlighting the art of sub-Saharan Africa. Along with all the traditional pieces were some modern bits of folk art. We liked this advertisement for hair care.

But what we really liked was a temporary show called “Alberta Mavericks” which illustrated the history of the province through examining the contributions of a variety of notable Albertans, some well-known and some who would be unfamiliar even to Alberta natives. It was great social history. The Rocket sign for Telstar Drugs was a local landmark.

From the Glenbow we walked down Stephen Street for a bit. Officially called 8 St SW, Stephen Street – its name fore the grid system was imposed – is a pedestrian mall. Most of these pedestrian streets in the United States are dismal urban renewal failures. Stephen Street, however, is a vibrant public space. This is the only part of downtown where the historic nineteenth century buildings have not been torn down, and today they house trendy restaurants and mostly expensive shops. I say “mostly expensive” because there was one discount place where John stopped and bought me another new shirt.

We walked from Stephen Street back to DogCity to pick up the beasts. They were happy to see us! Both of them looked and smelled to clean. We walk back to the bed and breakfast and when they arrived in the room they just plopped on their bed and fell asleep.

Tomorrow we leave Canada and begin the journey back to Los Angeles.

Down

This was a down day in several ways. First of all, we traveled downhill almost all the way as we left Lake Louise and made our way to Calgary. We also experienced a prairie downpour in the afternoon.  And there were a few down moments during the day when our plans did not quite work out as we anticipated. Still, although it was not the best day of the trip, it did have its pleasures.

When we woke up in the morning, there was a thick fog hanging over everything. We took our time getting up, packing up, and checking out. We decided to take Highway 1A, the Bow Valley Parkway, instead of the Trans-Canada Highway. It was a lovely park road, and there were many spots along the way to stop and enjoy the scenery or to pose for pictures.

There were also some historical markers and monuments here too. Canada not only interned the Japanese during World War II, but also interned Germans and Austrians during World War I. One of those World War I camp was located in Banff Park. Most of those who were imprisoned here were unemployed Ukrainian immigrants. This is a monument to those men. 

We continued down the road towards Johnston Canyon. We had met a couple people who told us that this was a great walk. I suspect it might be in the off-season, but we were stunned by the number of the people who were there and how crowded it was. It would have been hard walking up to the falls even without the dogs; with them, it was a nightmare. Although the canyon was quite pretty, we gave up and turned back. Before we left, however, we had to have the obligatory tourist photo.

We continued a little further to Banff. The fact that Johnston Canyon is sooo close to this resort town may explain the crowds. We stopped at the headquarters of the Canadian National Park system, a handsome nineteenth century building with lovely gardens perched high above the town.

We drove by the hot springs here – the Rocky Mountain parks were actually established to protect the springs from commercial exploitation – but there was no good place to park the car where the dogs would have shade, so we decided to pass on this famous attraction. John suggested that we try to get the dogs washed. I typed “Dog Wash Banff” into my phone, and a place called the Eagle Crescent Car and Dog Wash came up. We discovered that it was just a basic outdoor car wash where you could turn the hose on your pooch instead of your Porsche (not that, I suspect, people with Porsches actually wash their own cars). So we decided to pass on that too.

We drove about another hour until we came into Calgary. I was surprised at how quickly the mountains melt away into the prairie. As usual, the first impression of a city is seldom good. We drove through ugly suburban commercial strips before coming into the heart of the city. We’re staying at the Westways Bed and Breakfast. Our room is the one on the top floor with a tiny balcony.

We did not really have an agenda for the day, but thought it might be interesting just to walk into downtown Calgary – about a mile away – and see what we saw along the way. We walked a little by the edge of the Elbow River, and then came to an old railroad station. Just next to that was the Roman Catholic cathedral and a small park adjacent to it.

Calgary is a boom town, and there are new buildings everywhere.

We were about halfway to downtown when the dark cloud abruptly replaced the sunshine. Before we could even get to the nearest building for some shelter, it was pouring.

Eli really hates thunder and lightening, so he was trembling and whimpering. I had to hold him and comfort him. Edie, ever the strong female, simply surveyed the entire scene with a certain interested detachment.

We walked back to our bed and breakfast when the rain had subsided to mere drizzle. The dogs were not having a good time and neither were we. But we made it back reasonably dry, and our innkeeper had thoughtfully provided towels to help us dry off the beasts at the front door.

In the evening, the skies cleared. John and I set off for dinner – a place recommended on UrbanSpoon which it turned out had closed when we finally found the address – but on the way we drove through some of the adjacent neighborhoods. One nearby area was on a small bluff, and from a gap in between some houses John snapped this shot of Calgary’s downtown.

Tomorrow, we’re going to be dogless and do some serious exploration of this city.

Six Glaciers, Ten Peaks, and Some Laundry

There was no sign of the promised rain when we rose in the morning, so we had a quick breakfast of mediocre hotel room coffee and peanut butter on rye bread.  We drove to the lake. It was not yet nine in the morning, but the parking lot was already fairly full. Our plan was to hike up to the Plain of the Six Glaciers. In areas like the national parks bilingualism is strictly observed. This often seems a little absurd at times, but there was something about the translation of our destination into French – Le plaine des six glaciers – which made it seem more romantic and less geological. On the map, this looked like a relatively short and easy hike. It proved to be neither of those things, but both of us were glad we did it.

The trail next to the lake is wide, flat and easy, but as soon as we left the lakeshore we were steadily climbing in elevation and often climbing over rocks, too. Fortunately, there were lots of places to stop along the way not only to catch your breath but to take a picture. Once again we had some people offer to take a group picture of us. You can see the hotel at the very end of the lake.

I snapped this picture of John…

and he snapped this one of Edie.

It took some cajoling to get her to sit on that rock.

The area is dominated by the Victoria glacier. The lake is named after one of Queen Victoria’s daughters. I guess the nineteenth century Englishmen who gave names to all these places thought of the glacier as the mother of the lake. Although still a very impressive ice field, the Victoria glacier has diminished considerably in the last 50 years as a result of climate change.

At the very end of the trail there is a teahouse. The woman who runs the place has her own dog there, and all the dogs played around for a bit while we ordered a light lunch. Since this place was so remote, we were neither surprised nor upset that it was not cheap. We were surprised that the soup and the bread were so good!

Most people eat upstairs, but with the dogs we ate outside. We were joined by Hannah, a precocious third grader from Toronto, who is obviously crazy about dogs. “She’ll talk your ear off,” her mother warned us. She told us all about the results of her research project on Los Angeles and also the plots of several episodes of Marmaduke.

As usual, the trail back was a bit easier. We were tempted to let Edie off-leash to make it easier to walk, but when we saw some horses on the trail we thought better of it. Towards the end of the trail, we reached the point where the stream from the melting glacier enters the lake. Glacial silt, the fine sand formed from the crushed rock beneath the glacier, not only give the lake its famous turquoise color but also creates a beach of sorts at the delta.

After we finished this hike – a longer one than either of us expected it to be – we needed to figure out what to do for the rest of the afternoon. It was starting to cloud up a bit, but it was not raining. John said he was not up for any more major hikes today. I suggested that we go to Takkakaw Falls.

The Canadian Rockies have four national parks all adjacent to each other. Banff, where Lake Louise is located, is the most famous, but Jasper, Kootenay, and Yoho have equally impressive sights. Takkakaw Falls is in Yoho National Park. Since this is in British Columbia, not Alberta, we had to drive about 30 minutes west to get there. It was worth it! This is the largest waterfall in the Canadian Rockies. As I’ve noted before, it isn’t easy to get a picture of a waterfall. The motion of the water and the sound the water creates are simply cannot be captured by a still image, and even video somehow seems inadequate.

Edie did not share my fascination here, but was still willing to pose for a picture.

As we were leaving the lake, the rain finally started to fall. We returned to our hotel room. To make the time as productive as possible, we did a couple loads of laundry. This is an important part of traveling, but one that is not worthy of either pictures or commentary.

There was a fair bit of thunder with this storm, though we did not see much lightning. The dogs were tired and quite contented to sleep. So we left them in the room and went to look at the big, famous hotel. John snapped this picture of the side of the hotel with the mountains in the distance fading into the rain.

While the exterior of the hotel shows extensive renovations, some parts of the interior are still old and somewhat charming. In the picture below, you can see the lobby from the mezzanine. The Canadian Pacific chose to market the Lake Louise area as the North American Alps, so there is a vague Swiss theme throughout. You can see a bit of that in the chandelier.

The rain began to diminish, so we went back to the hotel and picked up the dogs. We drove this time to Moraine Lake. This is smaller than Lake Louise, but in some ways it is more dramatic. The lake is named after a pile of rock slag left at one end by a retreating glacier. Around the lake, ten different mountain peaks are visible. Some of these were covered in clouds which came and went as we did our lakefront walk. There were relatively few tourists here, so the dogs could really frolic.

Tomorrow, we will spend our last few hours in the Rockies and head towards our final Canadian destination, Calgary.