Eric’s Blog

The sound of laughter, gives the illusion of happiness. 水月鏡花, 喚起睡夢中的思想

Monday, June 29, 2015

Coming Back to Seattle

Thursday, June 26th, 2014

Train ride back wasn’t super interesting. Even though I’m on the same train as Erin and Cassie this time, since they had a cabin, and I had a normal coach seat, I sat by myself, again. We were able to see Spokane in the day.

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Of course, on the way, we passed by Wenatchee. Nothing to see here, as you can see from this picture:

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The breakfast on the train was not bad, though. Take a look at this picture, it looks pretty good, right?

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Of course, we also passed by Leavenworth. It looks like it’s a pretty small station. That small shack is the old Leavenworth station.

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We also passed by Edmonds, look at the pretty water!

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Finally we got back to Seattle. Go Seahawks!

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I will always remember this. Estimated 7 hours late :'(. But we finally got back!

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posted by eric3chang at 5:42 am  

Monday, June 29, 2015

Last Day at Glacier! Go Forward!

Wednesday, June 25th, 2014
Today, we decided to do nothing, because yesterday’s hike tired everyone out. I actually woke up at 9:30am after a good night’s sleep, and checked out at around 10am. Then I picked up Cassie and Erin from their C-4 cabin.

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We went to eat breakfast at Swiftmotor Inn cafe. It was a decent meal. I had the whole wheat gnoichi while the others had a house salad and a chicken wrap. They were all decent, but nothing to write home about. The juice and milk were expensive, though, at $2.50 a piece.

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Roesni was eventually able to join us after breakfast. I got some beer from the convenience store, the wheat lager with huckleberry was pretty good. We went back to Many Glacier to get Roesni’s laundry detergent and then dropped her off at Swiftcurrent.
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Then we were on our way back to West Glacier and Whitefish, but before that we decided that since we were close to the Canadian border, to go and take a look. I made a mistake of driving past the US border. We turned back before the Canadian border, but it was too late since we had to drive through the checkpoint. The police detained us for about 15 minutes before letting us go. That was a bullet dodged.

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Then we drove directly to Columbia Falls, but not before I stopped by Exxon for gas. In retrospect, I probably should have stopped elsewhere for gas because that was probably the most expensive gas station I have encountered, and I could have added less gas because I only had to return the car empty, but, whatever.

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When we got to Columbia Falls, Erin realized that this was just a city’s name and not an actual fall, so we continued to Kalispell. We stopped by a casino and gambled a little bit, they lost $1, I lost $2. We stopped by the mall, but none of us really wanted to shop. Cassie and Erin both checked their grades on my at&t phone because they had t-mobile and couldn’t use their phone for internet.

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We decided that dinner that day would be at The Shak, which is an upscale fast-food restaurant in Whitefish. We got the combo 2 pieces of fried chicken, 1 plate of beef brisket, 1 smoked potato, and 1 smoked potatoe salad. It was all very excellent, and made me glad that I did not go to the Chinese restaurant called “Cheng’s Garden 鄭家園.” I am glad that we looked at yelp for reviews. While eating, I decided that it would be a good idea to check the times for the train because I know trains often get delayed. We discovered that the train is delayed about 5 hours! So that means we would get on the train around 4am. We found out later that the train would be delayed more than 6 hours, and we got on at 5:30am.

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This made Erin depressed as she only wanted to go back to Seattle, but now we all found out that we would have to wait longer for that to happen. We decided that there was really nothing that we could do, so we still drove back to the train station, which was not open until 9:30pm. It was 8:30pm when we first visited, but then we drove to a gas station and used their restrooms.

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We waited in the train staion for soooooo long. Our train 7 Empire Builder arrived after the Eastbound Empire Builder 8 sister train :'(, which was scheduled to arrive 5 hours after our train. We left at 5:53am finally.

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My right pinkie knuckle is still hurting from when I punched a street pole out of frustration on missing my train to Whitefish, MT.

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posted by eric3chang at 5:25 am  

Monday, June 29, 2015

Tuesday, June 24th
I had a pretty good sleep in my non-cabin motel bed. I was able to get ready at 10:40am like we promised, but I did not see Roesni in the lobby of Swiftcurrent, so I went and bought a postcard in the gift shop. In fact, I didn’t see Roesni until 11:10am because I was sitting in a chair away from the restaurant and facing the gift shop, and she didn’t see me sitting there.

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We bought some lunch at Many Glacier snack shop and got some food from the employee’s cafetaria. I felt guilty for eating there since I’m not an employee, but nobody seems to mind. After lunch, we went kayaking for an hour on the lake in front of Many Glacier. It was pretty fun, except that some parts of the lake were pretty windy and the waves kept pushing us back. It took us 40 minutes to paddle all the way out to the middle of the lake but really only 15 minutes to paddle back because of the wind direction.

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It was so tiring that we decided to rest for half an hour at the Many Glacier Hotel lobby. Then later, we decided to go hike the Grinnell Glacier. We knew that the top of the trail was considered hazardous because of the snow on June 16th. That hazardous area started about 4 miles into the 5.5 mile hike. However, we still wanted to do that hike because it was the heart of Glacier National Park.

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The hike up to Grinnell Glacier started around Swiftcurrent Lake, which wasn’t too eventful. Actually, I should first say that it took us half an hour to find the trailhead for the hike. Then eventually we worked our way up the mountain, and it started to rain and became really windy >:O. Still, we persevered until about 4 miles into the hike I left Cassie, Erin, and Roesni to continue to the snow area by myself. Initially, I went up the right trail, but then I thought that I went down the wrong trail, so I went back and took the other trail, which actually was the wrong one, which I discovered after going down that it was not a trail. At the snow-filled area on top of the trail, my foot sank through packed snow, but I still went on until I saw that the very top the trails were completely covered in snow, and that’s when I turned back. So we got some pretty good pictures on the way down.

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We decided to eat at Many Glacier Hotel after we got back. It wasn’t a particularly good meal. In fact, it was terrible, especially for such a fancy hotel. I really think we hit the jackpot with St Mary Lodge, and to think that we only went there because we got back too late on Monday, June 23rd to eat at Many Glacier. I had the vegetarian straganoff, and the others had trout, prime rib, and chicken. All of us had the same bland and tough sauteed vegetables, and our portions were small, and really it was just cafetaria-quality food at a fancy restaurant.

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At night, we were all really tired by the time we went back to Swiftcurrent Inn to check Cassie and Erin into their cabin. They were not as lucky as I and their housecleaning person cleaned up their room. I offered to switch by cabin with them but they refused, and I wasn’t about to argue with them, because I was really tired, as well. So I just went to sleep.

luggage from ME!

luggage from ME!

But before I went to sleep, I attempted to call out using the phone card that I purchased earlier. However, since people were busy that night, and I just felt too tired, I was only able to talk over fb messenger.

posted by eric3chang at 5:01 am  

Monday, June 29, 2015

Arrival at Glacier!

Monday, June 23rd
So finally we have arrived at the so-called Whitefish staion. We actually arrived half an hour earlier at 4am instead of 4:30am! Perhaps it was because it was a weekend train that we arrived faster? After I arrived, I saw that the Hertz rental place had my car keys ready for me. I got a Hyundai Accent >:O. On the website it said Ford Focus or similar and I thought I would have a chance to choose the car like at an airport, but since this was 4am and the rental place was unstaffed, there was nothing I could do. I should have upgraded to the Intermediate car. The website says Toyota Corolla or similar but I think it would have been a Subaru Impreza. I don’t think the interior would have been better than the Accent, but I think the drive would have been better, especially since I would drive the whole way. I saw a couple of Imprezas in the Hertz rental “lot.” The “lot” was basically just a couple of stalls in front of the public parking lot of the train station.

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It was still completely dark when I started driving towards West Glacier and Lake McDonald Lodge to meet Cassie and Erin. So I wasn’t able to see anything. The street lamps were extremely dark and almost useless. It was funny because another guy was trying to find his car and I was, too, so I saw his car lights turning on and off from the remote fob and he saw my car lights turning on and off from my remote fob, so we were like, why is this car not responding to my command? The 2014 Hyundai Accent only had 72 miles on it! I’ve never driven such a new car before! But when I got the car, it had less than a quarter tank of gas left. Fortunately, I called Hertz and they said that it was ok, because they’ll just mark my car as having left Hertz empty.

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I took a couple of pictures on the way to Lake McDonald, and I got some pretty pictures, since it was the morning and the sun was just rising, but mostly I was driving fast to Lake McDonald Lodge. When I got there, it was around 6am, so I decided to sleep a little. At around 7am, I awoke because it was extremely cold. I don’t know why I didn’t do this earlier, but I decided to take my big Northface jacket on and wear it, as well as take out a long-sleeved shirt to use as pillow, to continue to sleep in the car.

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At around 9am, I went around to cabin number 9, because that’s what Cassie told me they are staying in. However, when I went around to cabin number 9, I saw that there were 5 rooms in cabin number 9. Fortunately, Cassie and Erin were awake and were talking so I was able to find out that they were in cabin number 9-1. I took a shower at their cabin, brushed my teeth, and we went on our way.

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I asked them what they did yesterday, and I was horrified at what they had to go through. Because they didn’t have a car, they decided to get off at West Glacier train station instead of Whitefish. However, West Glacier station was closed when they got off, so they were walking around anywhere in West Glacier trying to find a place where they could call Lake McDonald Lodge to come pick them up. Fortunately, their train was delayed by an hour so by the time they got to West Glacier, it was already 6am. It was fortunate because they didn’t have to wait as long in the cold for someone to pick them up. They decided to do a Red Bus tour first because they couldn’t check in, but were so tired that they slept for most of the tour. When they got back, they still couldn’t check in, because it was only 1pm after their lunch, so they went on a cruise.

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Since Cassie and Erin were able to tour West Glacier yesterday, we decided to go directly to East Glacier today after lunch at Lake McDonald Lodge. I had the bison burger, which was filling, though bison meat isn’t really that tender or tasty. Then we went to buy some stuff at the gift shop. We also stopped by at Eddie’s ice cream to eat huckleberry ice cream, which was great!

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While on the way to East Glacier, we took a wrong turn because of Erin’s “directions.” So we ended up going West instead of East. We only lost about 30 minutes, though. We weren’t able to drive the famous Going-To-the-Sun-Road because it snowed a lot on June 16th.

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We were able to hike the St Mary’s Falls trail and the Virginia Falls trail, which were fantastic trails. Virginia Falls was especially spectacular, but the force of the waterfall was so strong that I got all wet from taking the picture. Roundtrip, this was about a 3.4 mile hike. It took us about 2 hours to finish. Since it was 8pm by the time we finished, we only had time to drive to the town of St Mary and eat at the St Mary Lodge, Cabins, and Motel. The food was surprisingly good! I had the Braised Pork Shank and it was delicious! We also got a pasta and a schnitzel, which were both good, but not as good as the braised pork shank.

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We were able to get to Swiftcurrent Motel by 11pm, which was exactly the time that we said we would meet Cassie and Erin’s friend, Roesni. When I checked in, I discovered that my cabin was not cleaned by housecleaning. Since they couldn’t find a cabin room for me, they put me in the motel! This was a fantastic upgrade because in the cabin, we needed to use a public shower that needed a $2.5 token that gives you 8 minutes of shower, as well as a public restroom. In the motel, it was just like a regular room with private shower and restroom!

I took Cassie and Erin back to Mary Glacier Hotel and Roesni took a shower at my place since it was a better shower than even the employee showers. After I dropped Roesni off, I decided to park in front of the Swiftcurrent Motor Inn lobby in order to use their wifi. I discovered that the employee wifi was a lot faster than the guest wifi. However, I think because I didn’t park close enough, the wifi was a little bit inconsistent. I was still able to get the stuff I need but I had to hold the phone out in front of me.

posted by eric3chang at 4:49 am  

Monday, June 29, 2015

Attempt Number 2 at Glacier

Sunday, June 22nd, 2014
Ok, so today, I left my house early in order to avoid the mishap I had yesterday. By early, I meant 12:45pm . I originally meant to leave at 12:30pm, but somehow still left late. I tried to be faster by walking to catch the bus on 3rd Ave but it turns out that it takes more than 10 minutes to walk that distance. I should have just waited in front of Denny and Aurora Ave N .

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Anyways, I was able to get to the train station at around 1:20pm, which was more than enough time to board the train. There was a girl crying hysterically on the train when I boarded O__o. I didn’t feel like sitting with anyone, so I sat behind 2 kids. I had enough time to finish reading 2 IEEE Spectrum magazines on the train. I had dinner on the train, which was nice, because originally I had ordered the vegetarian pasta because I wanted to see if I could be vegetarian, but then when it came, it was so small! It was like half a plate of pasta plus half a plate of vegetables. I exchanged it for half a chicken steak plus mash potatoes plus vegetables. It was much more worth it for the money.

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posted by eric3chang at 4:32 am  

Monday, June 29, 2015

Trip to Glacier

Saturday, June 21st, 2014
Went to Glacier National Park with Cassie and Erin, or, I should say, I missed my train entirely, and had to take the train that arrives after that. The thing is, our train was supposed to leave Saturday, June 21st at 1:40pm, from King Street Station, but because I had to mail out some checks for tap, I left my place at 1pm instead of 12:30pm like I originally planned. On top of that, it was the day of the Rock N’ Roll Marathon. I got to the station at 1:46pm. The train left at 1:40pm >:O. But it was really a blessing in disguise because I forgot to bring my driver’s license so I wouldn’t have been able to rent a car at Whitefish if I had actually been able to go. I left my license on the kitchen counter because I was showing Carlene what my new license after I got the motorcycle endorsement looked like compared to the license I had before I got the motorcycle endorsement. I had to spend another $65 on top of the $180 to get the new train ticket.

I was so mad that I punched a street pole.

It wasn’t a completely unproductive day, however, I was able to go to 999 Hiawatha Pl S to take a look at the apartment. It was quite nice and a lot quieter than I expected from an apartment located off of Rainier Ave S. However, I did feel that it was a bit more expensive than I wanted, at $1400 for a 500 sq ft studio. I had dinner tonight in Seattle to think about my boneheaded decision to miss my train.

posted by eric3chang at 4:18 am  

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