So, I don't know what kind of a person you have to be to think that getting on a train for 4 days straight is a good idea, but i guess, suffice to say, I'm one of them. I think i'm an old romantic at heart and think that there is something rather nice about actually seeing some of the country that you're traveling through, even if you don't stop much - at least you know what you're missing!
Soooo, I had this grand plan, which involved me doing real-time blogging of my journey - i mean, it's not like i had much else to do. But like all the best laid plans, I some how didn't get around to much of it... Sooo, from the train:
"Grand Adventure: Day 1
9.30pm
Ok, so i'm on the train and we're headed out of Vancouver, into the great Canadian wilderness (the bit that I drove through yesterday, mostly, but I can't see it anyway so that doesn't detract from the grand adventure-ness of it.
So, for once, thought i'd attempt some real time blogging. Obvs, since I don't have the internet on the train, you can't read it real time, but rest assured that I have precisely nothing else to do other than to type it real-time.
My thoughts so far are “Well, isn't this exciting”. I've never set out to travel quite so far by land before. Even my travels last summer cut the corner a little by heading south to the skinnier bit of North America. This truly is grand. This feeling is compounded by little bits of history I have heard here and there. For example, Neil's Dad and Grandparents emigrated from England some 40 something years ago out to Penticton, and took this very route, only in reverse. Only it turns out that it's not only this very route that they took, but this very same train! The same trains, according to our friendly cabin attendant, have serviced this route for the last 60 years, with only minor technical upgrades, like a diesel engine and in-car electricity... I feel rather like some kind of pioneer all of a sudden :D (Only, I suppose i'm going in the wrong direction for that. Still, Ottawa seems like a wild enough place. Outlaws and buffalo abound, I imagine...)
Right, time for some bed time reading, ready to wake up in time for a 6.30am breakfast in Kamloops – a place I have so far managed to avoid...
1 hour down, 89, or so, to go..."
And that was as far as on-train blogging actually got. I take this to be a good thing however, it means i was pleasantly otherwise occupied and taking in the scenery.
In the end, I still didn't see much of Kamloops. I guess i find it pretty hard to be enthusiastic about anything much at 6.30am, and besides i didn't want to be tired for the long hard day of watching fantastic mountains that i had ahead of me. The next stop after Kamloops is Jasper at around 4pm. You spend the day winding up the other side of the Rockies from when we drove up last summer. It's filled with trees and waterfalls and mountains, and all-in-all is rather spectacular. (again, pics are to follow).
Really, i did this whole journey backwards, in so far as you get your most spectacular day first, but i knew that, and the rest of the journey held a certain sort of intrigue for me too, so i wasn't concerned. It was really good (and very surreal) to get off the train in Jasper, having been there the previous year on the other side of the summer. The whole place is a bit prettier when there's still snow on the mountains, but it was cool to see it in the summer time too. I would say that Jasper is a bit more in its element in the summer than in late spring when we came before, except that on both occasions it just rained cold, wet rain on me and so didn't really seem much different! I took the chance to sent a postcard to Ottawa (see if it beat me there - it's not really a holiday if you don't send a postcard!) and eat some dinner. I also wandered around the hundred million tourist shops that Jasper is home to (almost exclusively, in fact - you can buy cheap tourist tat, or, expensive tourist tat - that's about your choice really...) It had even more shops that I remember. Perhaps some were closed for the off season last time... Meh. Anyways, back to the train for dinner time, and onwards we went, south through the Rockies (almost more impressive on this side than they were coming up) on towards Edmonton.
On these trains - particularly from economy class, the dome cars they have are invaluable to your enjoyment of the trip. They let you see everything and take proper pictures as well. That's where I spent almost all my time, and also is a good place to meet and hang out with other travelers. I met a really fun, but diverse, group of peeps on the train. We all chatted, chilled out in the evening and spent out time trying to work out what the random crap we could see was, as well as swapping notes on the best ways to get a good nights sleep. It was fun.
On that note, fortunately for us all, the train was waaaay less than half full, which meant that for those of use who had chosen steerage, we could use two seats, not one, for our bed, which i can only imagine was waaaaaaaay more comfortable than it might have been.
Anyways, like i say, next stop was Edmonton, but that one was sometime around midnight, and the station is a looong way from the city, so mostly i just saw a bunch of bright lights on a plain. My highlight of the evening was when a couple who had got off to smoke saw the train start to chug away (only to shunt some carriages around - it wasn't going anywhere), the look on their faces was priceless... hehehe...
I actually got a really good night's sleep that night and woke up in the morning when we stopped briefly in Saskatoon. Now everyone I've ever met from Saskatoon has been fantastically lovely, so i was a little curious, but in all honesty, it doesn't look that exciting, try as hard as i did to imagine. Perhaps it's because it's such an otherwise unexciting place that people feel the need to make one another's days brighter. Or maybe that's fantastically unfair, but in any case, on we went.
The day ahead was the Prairies. It was very very flat for a very very long way. But I actually quite enjoyed it - I've never seen anywhere quite so flat before - not even Cambridge. There was lots to look at though - little tiny agricultural towns and grain silos and other essentially boring things that i took small delights in. I also saw people burning their crops, which I've never seen before... looks really weird. Tractors chasing us, creepy derelict stations, and a whooooole lot of sky. I love how huuuuge the sky is when there's nothing else around to be in it. I spent a long time that day cloud-gazing, and a whole lot more time seeing what the furthest in to the distance i could see was. I know, you wish you had such an exciting life! ;p
Our day on the prairies came rolling to an end with an evening change-over in Winnipeg. Since all the crew were switching, we got to have a bit of a longer wander around here. Having carefully researched what there was to do with 2 hours in Winnipeg, I made sure to visit the historic site 'The Forks'. This is the confluence of two important rivers. I don't know if I just missed the sign that explained to me why these rivers, or their confluence, was important - it clearly was, but I never found that sign, so i can't tell you. It is clearly, however, of some importance to the Manitoba government and there are statues and gardens and things. I'd have taken some nondescript pictures, but it was dark, so I really didn't think you'd get much out of them. It's enough to imagine any big two rivers. That said, the whole area seems to be being renovated at the moment, and there's a fantastic looking bridge and (at a guess) concert hall, or something, which were very pretty, and, conveniently, lit-up. After wandering some more around the little market hall thing by the station, I went to venture further into the city, however, lacking a map, I walked up what looked like a main street, only to come to the conclusion 4 blocks in, that this was perhaps beyond sense given the inane (yet creepy) mumblings (and presence in general) of the locals. So, with that, I headed back to bed down for the night.
Our day on the prairies came rolling to an end with an evening change-over in Winnipeg. Since all the crew were switching, we got to have a bit of a longer wander around here. Having carefully researched what there was to do with 2 hours in Winnipeg, I made sure to visit the historic site 'The Forks'. This is the confluence of two important rivers. I don't know if I just missed the sign that explained to me why these rivers, or their confluence, was important - it clearly was, but I never found that sign, so i can't tell you. It is clearly, however, of some importance to the Manitoba government and there are statues and gardens and things. I'd have taken some nondescript pictures, but it was dark, so I really didn't think you'd get much out of them. It's enough to imagine any big two rivers. That said, the whole area seems to be being renovated at the moment, and there's a fantastic looking bridge and (at a guess) concert hall, or something, which were very pretty, and, conveniently, lit-up. After wandering some more around the little market hall thing by the station, I went to venture further into the city, however, lacking a map, I walked up what looked like a main street, only to come to the conclusion 4 blocks in, that this was perhaps beyond sense given the inane (yet creepy) mumblings (and presence in general) of the locals. So, with that, I headed back to bed down for the night.
Rolling on into the evening, I have to say, I was pretty glad that this would be my last night in the nest i had created on my two whole chairs. The next morning, as a nice end to the trip (well, nearly), I brunched in style in the dining cart (surprisingly reasonably priced and a very nice brunch!) and looked at the world go by as we started to see signs of civilization again. And then stopped. Having been ahead of schedule for 3 days running, we'd lost two hours to stopping for freight over night, and were now stopped again 30 minutes outside of Toronto due to freak flooding. Every transfer passenger on the train except for me (and whoever had my connection), watched their connection time come and go, and then we finally got started up again. I was mistaken however, for thinking i might have gotten away with it, watching my connecting train leave the station just as we rolled in to the platform... sigh. On the plus side, I now had an extra 3 hours in Toronto to do all the touristy things that I didn't do last time i was there :) Win! So I visited Kensington market, which is a fantastic food market in downtown, and did some impromptu shopping. It was nice to hang around in downtown a bit more during the day time, since i had mainly visited there in the evening last time, and it looks quite different. So while everyone else was pretty annoyed, i had a jolly little afternoon jaunt and rather enjoyed myself. I wasn't quite so keen to get back on a train when my connection time rolled around, but what's another 5 hours?! Plus, this new train had wi-fi. After looking out for sometime on Lake Ontario, which looks strangely similar to Lake Michigan, it got dark and reverted to catching up with emails/blogs/facebook etc.
5 hours later and I arrived in Ottawa, my new home for the winter. Neil came and picked me up and we headed home. I promise I will blog about Ottawa soon. I guess I've just been busy getting on with life and doing slightly unspectacular things like not-working, and, working... Still, definitely things to tell, and so I will, soon. :)
