The Rocky Mountaineer is a Canadian train that has no sleeping quarters onboard.  It is a long-range train with only an all-daylight service, meaning that passengers are transferred to partner hotels for overnight accommodations to ensure that they do not miss any scenery.  They have an amazing luggage transport service with mind boggling options. We left our Banff hotel at 7:15AM when the temperature was 42F.  The train departed at around 8AM, went west, and arrived in Kamloops at 7:15PM  We exited the train with heavy overcoats, and were shocked to find that the temperature was just around 80F.  I provide these details because, we have been freezing from a month ago when our Viking cruise from Manhattan to Toronto experienced sub-zero temperatures.  We have seen snow during this whole period and just about all day today.  Until we got off the train to be stunned by the warmth.  We leave around 7AM tomorrow morning when the temperature will be ju...

My next couple of days will involve travel on the Rocky Mountaineer, which has no WiFi.  I will thus try to insert a daily mini-post, providing highlights, to be followed by full tour details when I get to Vancouver.  Thus, today, just a couple videos and photos of our stay in Banff.  We saw an assortment of wild animals yesterday.  Bighorn sheep at the top of the Banff Gondola. This current internet system takes forever to download a video to You Tube, but should eventually clear sometime today. A video of Emerald Lake. Our Cinco de Mayo lunch. Today we board the Rocky Mountaineer to Kamloops. -

The cities of Jasper, Lake Louise and Banff are all in the Canadian Rockies. The Canadian and American Rockies are part of the same 4000-mile mountain system, the  North American Cordillera,  stretching from Alaska to Mexico. Well, many say the American Cordillera has end points in Alaska and the Antarctic, and is 8300 miles long. The peak was Denali at 20,301 feet, but President Trump reversed the name back to Mount McKinley, even though he never visited this site. However, Mount Acondagua in South America rises to a peak of 22,841 feet, and is thus even taller. There is a lot of confusion here, for some say the Rocky Mountains extend for 3000 miles, from the northernmost part of British Columbia and Alberta down to New Mexico, and what is a cordillera anyway. Similarly, there is such a thing as the  Continental Divide of the Americas . This too is somewhat complex. There is one long vertical one for North America, with assorter others, depending on where the water goes....

The only meal we had in Jasper was in our room.  There was a market nearby, so we bought ingredients for nachos and chicken.  The wine was from the American Melody.  A fabulous Merlot from Paso Robles. So yesterday, we left Jasper for Lake Louise in a van with a guide and three others. s In particular, Jake, our guide from State Farm....nah, Alberta Blue Sky tours...talked about that  terrible wildfire of 2024. The ride continued, and scenery was awesome. We stopped by Athabasca Falls. A few miles further on was a smaller falls. I should mention something I've never seen before.  The pine cones for spruce trees are only at the very top of the tree.  Why?  Evolution has taught the tree to place future seeds up there to minimize animals eating the nuts.  Plus, if there is a forest fire, the outside protects the inner cones. More scenes. We stopped to film one of the Columbia glaciers. The highlight of this tour was the Athabasca Glacier. We were gre...