ehbowen
Engineer
To recap...my Railfan Madness 2015 trip was, IMHO, a great success: HOS-NOL-CHI-FUL-ANA-LAX-HOS, with a 2-night layover in New Orleans and 2 nights visiting Mickey in Anaheim. I'm now looking towards what I can do when I accumulate some more vacation time, say by mid-May. I'm driven by the following considerations:
Some questions I have:
- I have never ridden any portion of the California Zephyr...well, save for the mileage it shares with the Southwest Chief immediately out of Chicago.
- I have ridden only the Seattle-Whitefish segment of the Empire Builder, in 2014...although my father and I did stay at the Izaak Walton Inn in 2011 (we drove).
- I have already ridden every other Western Amtrak route bumper-to-bumper, or nearly so.
- I've heard a great deal about Victoria in British Columbia. I made a port call in Vancouver in 1988 and visited the city again on a little day trip from Seattle last year, but I've never been out to the island.
- I have 28,000+ AGR points on account, which apparently will not be worth nearly as much under AGR 2.0.
Some questions I have:
- When's the best time of year to visit Victoria/Vancouver? I normally prefer to travel earlier in the year, but I could go later (say Sept.-Oct.) if Fall would be preferable to Spring.
- Can anyone recommend a good Victoria hotel? (I Googled the classic Empress hotel just to check their rates...no way, sorry!)
- Likewise, does anyone have personal experience with any of the tours offered in Victoria? How about the transfer from Vancouver to the island and back?
- My current planned itinerary is based upon what Amtrak offered between city pairs, but does anyone think it worthwhile to try to rearrange things so as to take the CZ westbound and the EB eastbound?
Last edited by a moderator: