Canada: Three idiots in an RV part 1

I'm back! And alive. And in Alaska. If you've been wondering where the blog's been, apologies for the radio silence over the past couple of weeks - I was in an RV for most of it with seriously limited Wi-Fi. Recap follows below. I've split it into two parts, just because a lot has happened and I don't want to just give you text wall.

So, you know how I've been travelling mostly solo for the last 2 months? For the last two weeks, I've had the joy of road tripping with my mum and sister. This is a slightly odd thing for my brain to deal with, but the first week has turned out wonderfully.

If in doubt, Tim Hortons

I think I left the last post at the point of going to retrieve Mum and Amy from the airport. Turns out the flight was delayed nearly an hour, so I pulled my usual and had a bagel and cuppa from Tim Hortons while I waited. They turned up eventually and then it was off to the city to check in to the hotel.

A hotel! I've been staying in hostels for the last 2 months (give or take an AirBnB and emergency hotel), so this was pretty nice. Not the absolute swishest of places, but they did have toiletries that I could filch. Hurrah. Oh, and this view out over the city.

Mum and Amy were fighting the jet lag, so we went for a walk down to the bay, where we found a very nice Chinese restaurant for tea. We were the only non-Chinese people in there. I take this as a sign that it's proper Chinese food. It was delicious, but expensive. Ah well.

Be Our Guest

We made up for the expensive tea the following morning by visiting Tim Hortons for breakfast. And to think I'd been doing so well about resisting the call of the Tims...

Anyway, the morning continued with a trip to Granville Island Market, which was pretty cool. Grabbed some delicious reasonably priced fruit and then set off for a walk around the sea wall.

Which involved getting a ferry, of which no photos, for some reason. Anyways, the sea wall was lovely and warm with a nice breeze and this random inukshuk...

Then off into Stanley Park, but not before we bumped into a family of raccoons. So cute.

Stanley Park is a little bit huge, but mostly forested, so it made for a gorgeously cool walk after the heat out in the open. There may have been some giggles about bears, to which Amy's response was to sing the Winnie the Pooh song. On repeat. For ages.

After a lovely afternoon strolling around the park, we popped back to the hotel and then had tea at the White Spot Diner (most delicious) before heading back to the park to see a production of Beauty and the Beast. Great show. Even better for being outside in lovely weather.

Jurassic Goat

The following morning we boarded a free bus up to Capilano Suspension Bridge on the northern side of Vancouver. Yay, free things. Plus, I got discount at the bridge because I have HI membership - see, perks of staying in hostels.

Anyhoos, the Capilano Suspension Bridge is just a bridge across a ravine. It also happens to be very wobbly. And sort of bouncy. And has the delightful ability to freak people out without even trying. Unless you're not really bothered about heights or wobbly bridges, like me, in which case it's just fun watching everyone else freak out and pull funny faces with every wibble.

The complex also includes a tree top walk, somewhat dampened by the fairly large number of people using it. The walk through the forest is pretty cool though and I have to mention the owls, because OWLS.

Following a leisurely wander around the bridge complex, we hopped onto a public bus (oh my) up the road to Grouse Mountain. More entry fees, but easily made up for by everything on offer on the mountain. We took in a guided walk with one of the rangers, a ride up the chairlift to the top of the mountain, a most amusing lumberjack show and a glimpse of the mountain's two captive grizzly bears.

Great fun. Especially when the chairlift inexplicably stopped while we were hanging just outside the bear enclosure. I may have joked that we were like the goat in Jurassic Park... just hanging there... waiting to lure the bears out...

As mentioned above, the lumberjack show was also awesome. Bizarre, but awesome. See photo of two men trying to balance on a log while trying to knock the other off...

After coming back down the mountain, we were told that the free shuttle bus back to the city was buggered up and we'd have to get another public bus instead. Cue Mum giving me all her change because I had none and then a ridiculously long time stuck on a bus in traffic in Vancouver's boiling heat. Nice.

Amy decided we should rectify our resulting bad moods with a trip to Tim Horton's for tea. And of course no one objected.

His name is Wes

On Monday morning we took a super long taxi ride out to Delta, south of Vancouver, to pick up the RV. After some wrangling because we'd turned up earlier than the company wanted (not our fault), we finallly got on the road.

Sort of. So, Mum's driving along a bit stressed because she's driving an automatic, on the wrong side of the road and it's a whole lot bigger than anything she's used to driving. I'm grumbling about the map and directions I've got to work from. They are shit. Super shit. And as a result, we ended up going in entirely the wrong direction and nearly ended up getting on the ferry to Victoria... or Nanaimo... or something.

Oops.

Anyways, we sorted it out, after a few minutes of me thinking I was going to get dumped at the side of the road for getting the directions so badly wrong. This is still bugging me, because usually I'm pretty bloody good with navigation. How annoying.

Safely back on the right track, we finally made it to Whistler, where I discovered the RV's name was Wes (reg plate 145 WES, so definitely a Wes) and we headed straight into town to find our activity for the evening.

Ziplining.

Oh yes. This sounded like great fun to me. Amy didn't seem entirely convinced. 5 lines through the forest above Whistler, with tales including a cougar eating a fresh kill on one of the landing platforms during one trip. Fortunately we didn't run into any cougars or other delightful wildlife. Unfortunately, none of us took a camera, so I am limited to sharing these glorious shots with you which were taken by one of the staff.

Aren't we graceful? I was trying to turn myself upside down there, but couldn't quite convince myself to let go of the strap.

Following our little adrenaline fix, we headed back to the campsite for the evening where a friendly Canadian chap kindly parked Wes for us after watching Mum deliberate for a while. Yay, friendly Canadians.

Wes is trying to kill us...

Day two in the RV began with Amy taking a turn at the wheel. This meant a leisurely drive through the coastal mountains and on into the almost desert like region beyond. What should have been an uneventful drive was first interrupted by the carbon monoxide alarm going off. This resulted in Mum throwing herself across the RV as she tried to open windows while Amy pootled down the road. Wes, we decided, was trying to kill us.

It was also interrupted by Wes's complete inability to maintain revs going down hills. Which resulted in stalling. I thought it was pretty much impossible to stall an automatic, but between Mum and Amy, Wes stalled quite a few times during our first few days.

Anyways, we managed a stop at lovely Marble Canyon just for a few minutes to recover from the madness. I geeked out slightly because they have stromatolite-like microbial formations in the lake. This is awesome.

It was, however, approaching TOO HOT. Which only got worse when we finally got to Juniper Beach Provincial Park, our stop for the night. We spent the afternoon lazing around in the sunshine, too warm to do anything and Amy actually went and stuck her feet in the river.

This would become a recurring theme...

Why have you stopped paddling?!

Day three should have been fairly uneventful. Get in the RV. Drive to Kamloops. Get groceries. Drive to Clearwater. Park RV. Explore.

Which is pretty much how it went until the directions GoogleMaps had produced for Mum tried to send us down a dirt track. A good 20km or so from the campsite. Amy niftily turned the RV round and we pootled off back the way we came.

Fortunately, once in Clearwater (which is on the main highway, so god knows why the directions sent us so far wrong), the site was easy to find. We grabbed lunch at the Painted Turtle restaurant on the site where I finally got round to trying London Fog. This is pretty much like a latte, only with Earl Grey tea instead of coffee. It is delicious. Plus, look at the view from our table.

After lunch had chance to settle, we hired a canoe for an hour of paddling out on Dutch Lake, on which shores the site sat. This began as a sort of leisurely meander, Amy and I doing the paddling, Mum being chief photographer.

It was great fun. Until we turned to head back to the dock and realised that the wind was determined to blow us back the way we'd come. Hilarity ensued as Mum took over paddling from Amy and then Amy took over paddling from me. Mum was in the Sea Cadets and had a bit more idea what she was doing, so she got to be captain. I think we might have still been paddling round the lake if it had just been me and Amy...

That evening, Amy decided to stick her feet into the lake while I took photos of the moon being pretty. It really was a gorgeous moonrise.

The glacier-fed lake was icy cold!

Day four in the RV began with a drive to the tiny settlement of Valemount where we grabbed a delicious bite to eat at Don's Social House, a little diner just off the highway.

From there it was just a short drive up to Mount Robson Provincial Park and our campsite. Having arrived so early, we decided to take the trail up to Kinney Lake at the feet of Mount Robson. We were rather under-prepared. Amy decided to sing Be Our Guest in order to either stop her feet hurting or to scare the bears away. The 4.2km "easy" track climbed quite steeply in places. It was too hot.

In the end, we did reach the lake, which was a beautiful cloudy blue-green thanks to the large amounts of rock flour - very tiny rock particles - suspended in it.

There wasn't a suitable place for Amy to stick her feet in the river flowing down from the lake, so we all stuck our hands in it instead. It was icy cold, as can only be expected from a glacier fed river.

After a long trek down from the lake, we spent another evening enjoying the peace and quiet at the campsite.

Idiots abroad

The end of my first week with Mum and Amy began with a gentle drive from British Columbia into Alberta, with a first stop at Moose Lake.

Again, Amy discovered that glacier fed systems are icy cold, but put her feet in it anyway. Mum made friends with a dog called Louie. And then we toddled off over the provincial border, past the town of Jasper and on up a winding road to Maligne Lake. This entailed negotiating the crowd of parked cars and associated idiots who had near enough blocked the road part way up. On a bend.

I have no idea what they were gawping at. Probably a bear or moose. Neither of which they should have been so close to. Anyways, we eventually made it up to the lake, grabbed a delicious and reasonably priced lunch from the cafe and then set off to visit our second Moose Lake of the day.

Amy did not stick her feet in this one. I think we may all have been slightly worried about bears.

And then back down to Maligne Lake, which is a beautiful bright blue-green.

Gorgeous. Took a walk round another of the marked trails, although this one seemed to go on for much longer than the map suggested and we started wondering if we'd gone the wrong way. Fortunately, Wes finally loomed into view in the car park and it was off to the campsite and the associated bear warnings. We were starting to get used to them...

Well, that covers week one of my adventure with Mum and Amy. Week two should be posted shortly. Just as soon as my brain wakes up again. 5am start to catch a plane this morning is not agreeing with me.

Ziplines and canoes and hiking! Hurrah!

Canada: Far over the [Misty] Mountains cold...

Wow. This was my final week of solo travel in Canada. By the time this is posted, I'll have retrieved my mum and sister from the airport for a 2 week road trip through the Rockies.

Anyway, that's for next week. Let's have a look at what I've been doing this week, shall we?

Tiny winged demons

While I did technically have a full day in Edmonton the day I arrived, I wasted that being tired and lethargic. So Saturday, my first non-knackered day in the city, I decided to go for a wander down to the river I'd seen on the way to the hostel.

This is the North Saskatchewan River. It's... quite big. On the southern side, where I was staying, there's a whole series of parks along the bank with plenty of trails, so I took a nice two hour stroll through there. Some really gorgeous views.

The only slight drawback of wandering through woods near a big river was the inevitable attack by tiny winged demons. Usually known as gnats/midges/mozzies. I don't know which ones they were. The important thing is I hadn't even thought about putting on insect repellent and as a result had grown an extra elbow by the following morning, alongside an assortment of other bite-induced lumps. Yay.

The hostel had advertised the evening as "Wine and Cheese Night". So I figured I'd filch myself some free cheese and maybe a glass of wine. There was no cheese left when I popped in about 10 minutes after the advertised start. There was wine.

My Slovenian roommate pulled a face and said it tasted more like sangria and I'm inclined to agree. Not complaining - first alcohol since I left the UK and free to boot. It went all right with my linguine.

Attack of the muse

The annoying gnat bites may go some way towards explaining why I was rather less inclined to go exploring on Sunday. Well, that and the fact that my writing muse suddenly decided to wake up again after taking a week off after Camp NaNoWriMo. 

Instead of exploring I ended up writing several thousand words about the languages in the fictional universe I'm working in at the moment.

Yeah. And then when I did finally decide to go and have a look around Strathcona, the lovely old area around the hostel, I ended up in a second hand bookshop and had to escort myself back to the hostel before I spent ALL THE MONEY. I did get a Terry Pratchett book out of it though...

And then I wrote some more.

Write All The Words

Yeah, so Monday ended up being much the same as Sunday with the added bonus of possibly solving my Seattle-West Yellowstone transport problem. Hurrah.

I think I wrote about 5000 words. This is a lot of words. Most of them were rubbish, but at least my brain is back in writing mode. I like my brain in writing mode. It's more fun.

I managed another short exploratory foray into Strathcona, where I discovered that some of the pedestrian crossings are rainbows.

My brain made some sort of Mario Kart Rainbow Road reference. It wasn't all that funny, because my brain is not good at making the funnies.

Reasoning that I'd want an early night because of the horrible 7:37am train the next day, I turned in far earlier than usual, failed to get to sleep until after midnight because my brain is a bitch and then was rudely awoken at 4am by the return of...

The Mother of All Storms

For those who missed out on the New Zealand expedition madness, the Mother of All Storms, also known simply as The Storm, was a massive thunderstorm which followed us around the South Island for a few days with scary ass lightning and the loudest thunder I've ever heard. I'm sure the same storm has started following me across Canada, starting in Ottawa (or possibly even Montreal), getting worse in Winnipeg and now Edmonton...

Well, I'm pretty sure lightning struck the street outside the hostel. The gap between the flash of lightning and the thunder going BOOM (seriously, BOOM, not rumble rumble. BOOM) was pretty much non-existent. So I didn't really get much sleep. Fun times.

I hate that storm.

At least that meant I was awake in plenty of time to get my taxi back to the station. The train arrived nearly on time and then I was off on my way to Vancouver, via the Rockies. A bit of a damp morning, but then we hit the mountains and it was beautiful.

I couldn't resist putting the Lord of the Rings soundtracks on as the scenery slid past the windows. I can't wait until I get to explore the mountains in the next couple of weeks.

Only stop of the day was at the tourist hub of Jasper, which is a pretty little place. The train got cleaned out there, so I had an hour to wander round and find an awesome bakery where I found myself some cakey goodness. I would have taken a photo of it, but I was seriously craving sweetness, so I ate it before I had a chance. It was a Nanaimo Square and most scrumptious.

Also in Jasper, I noted that they'd added a third locomotive to the front of the train. Given that there were already two up there to get us to Jasper, I figured this meant we'd be doing quite a lot of climbing and descending on our way to Vancouver.

Unfortunately, I turned round from geeking about the locos to find The Storm bearing down on us again.

About 10 minutes after I took that photo, while we were all milling about waiting to get on the train, The Storm arrived. Rarely have I seen such big raindrops. The crew weren't quite ready to let us board, but with the rain coming down hard, they decided not to wait and there was a bit of a free for all. Suffice to say, by the time I got onto the train, I was soaked.

And then, on top of being sodden, I had to move because some pathetic couple just couldn't bear to sit separately for a few hours. I would probably not have been so pissed off about this if I hadn't been a) soaked and b) operating on about 4 hours sleep. I wouldn't have minded sharing the two seater I'd claimed on boarding at Edmonton, but being made to move rankled.

So I migrated to the cafe car instead, along with a whole bunch of other people who'd had to move to accommodate groups and pairs. We ended up having an impromptu music session courtesy of Catarina from Australia and John from Canada, who kept us entertained with a whole assortment of songs for a good two or three hours.

In the meantime, some wonderful things were going past the windows, but courtesy of the lights reflecting in the windows, I don't have many good photos. This is one of the better ones.

I hung around in the cafe car until about 10pm, staying awake through the consumption of large cups of tea and the residual effects of my sugar-rich deliciousness from Jasper. Which meant I got to see the moon looking pretty over the mountains, although my photo does not do it justice.

And then time for sleep. Well. It should have been time for sleep. You try sleeping next to a both quite tall and rather broad gentleman (lovely guy, but oh my god, the man-spreading) and across from a guy who snored all night. You know how most peoeple, when they snore, do so for a little while and then sort of snort a bit and stop? Yeah. This guy didn't. He just snored. All. Fucking. Night. Man-spreading dude I could deal with because I'm little and the seats are quite big. Snoring man, not so much. I was very close to clubbing him over the head with a walking boot.

Sleep? What sleep?

Suffice to say, I was not in the best of moods when I woke up from another small doze at 6am. I retreated once again to the cafe car, downed another cup of tea and tried to think happy thoughts. This is remarkably hard when you've had about 8 hours sleep in the last 48.

Fortunately, the scenery was still busy being pretty. Reminded me quite a bit of Canterbury in New Zealand - probably to do with the big plain surrounded by mountains.

And then into Vancouver. Finally. This means I've near enough gone from one coast of Canada to the other, if we ignore the fact that I didn't get to Newfoundland. I am rather pleased about this.

Unfortunately, my lack of sleep may have triggered the weird anxiety I get about crowds, which meant waiting to pick up my bag at the station was hell for the 5 minutes I managed before running away to a quieter waiting area for a bit. And I'd been doing so well with crowds so far. How annoying.

On the other hand, the hostel I'm staying at had provided excellent directions and the public transport system in Vancouver is (at that time at least) both efficient and quiet. No huge crowds waiting to freak me out. Hurrah.

I spent the rest of the day first exploring a bit of Jericho Park, which the hostel sits in...

And then sleeping. Because, oh my god, I needed it. And then I read my new Terry Pratchett book (the Discworld Companion. Very good for a reference book) and then I slept some more.

Hurrah.

I'm sure there's a park around here somewhere...

Having had so much sleep the day before, Thursday was a rather more pleasant experience. First, I had a lovely (unhealthy) breakfast at the little cafe attached to the hostel.

It was basically a Full English, with a scone (called a biscuit for some reason...) instead of toast. And it was wonderful. However, I probably needed to do something about burning off all those calories, so I decided to go in search of the Pacific Spirit Regional Park, which Google reliably informed me was a mere half hour walk away.

So I toddled off up the hill, through the residential areas. And kept going. And kept going some more. And I think I found the park. Only, I couldn't find a way in (possibly just being my unobservant self) and I'd rather underestimated how warm it was. It had felt quite mild when I left the hostel, but by the time I got up to where the park was supposed to be, wearing jeans was turning out to be a bad move.

So I gave up and settled for coming back to the hostel and getting my laundry done. Thrilling.

No worries. I made up for my complete lack of activity by going down to the beach at sunset and enjoying the view. Definitely worth it, although my photos don't really do it justice. This is the view down the bay out towards the ocean.

And this is the Vancouver skyline, which looked awesome on the little screen on my camera, but sadly is rather less in focus when blown up.

And finally, the little cafe/restaurant on the waterfront.

I haven't seen nearly enough sunsets yet. I need more sunsets in my life.

Delayed...

As mentioned at the top, at the time this is posted, I should be retrieving my mum and sister from the airport. At the time of writing, the flight's delayed by nearly an hour. Which might mean me locating a cafe at the airport and drinking copious amounts of tea. We'll see.

In the next week, I'll be going on a motorhome road trip with Mum and Amy, from Vancouver up into the Rockies. Back into the [Misty] Mountains cold...

Canada: Am I there yet?

I'm well over halfway through my Canadian adventure now. In fact, I now only have 3 weeks left here before I depart for Alaska. Anyway, the updates continue, so here's what's been going on this week.

Why are we reversing?

I spent much of Saturday being lazy, which was delightful - although I'd forgotten about how much time I lose hopping through links on Wikipedia when I have nothing better to do... Finally, around 6pm I left the fairly quiet city of Hamilton and hopped back on a bus to Toronto. Not because I was planning on staying in Toronto but because I had to get on a train.

Ah yes, the train. The evening's joys began with the guy in front of me at the ticket counter/check in desk, who completely flipped out at the clerk because he missed his train. Never mind the fact that he'd clearly turned up just as the train was leaving, he was adamant the clerk had made him miss his train. She called security while I tried not to smirk.

And then I had even more time to kill so went in search of food. Easier said than done because there was a carnival on in the afternoon and every single food place was heaving. Apart from Quiznos, so I ended up trying out their subs. Not bad.

At last and surprisingly on time, the train left Toronto at 10pm. I'm figuring I'll probably not sleep great (because I never do in transit) so settle for watching the scenery go by. Which is why I got very confused when about 30 minutes out of the station the train started reversing... for nearly 15 minutes. So confused (nearly as confused as I was just now when my tablet stopped picking up my keyboard properly...)

SWIMMING MOOSE

Anyway, we must have ended up going the right way in the end. I slept... not well, but a lot better than I expected. The morning was something of a non-event, given that I was stuck on a train (and would be for another 24 hours), but I did see some beautiful scenery and I'm pretty sure I saw a moose swimming. Here is the photo evidence.

Yes, it's appalling, but I was on a train and half asleep and the moose (or whatever it was) was swimming. I think I might also have seen some beaver dams, but they could have been just piles of stuff in streams for all I know. Sleep deprivation is not great for these things.

I spent much of my second day on the train gazing out of the window and reading. The train has a car with a panoramic dome on top, which was pretty cool for getting shots like this.

And I did at least get the chance to get off the train for a few minutes when we stopped at Hornepayne. Grabbed a few pictures of the locomotives and the train.

Big ass train. Not as big as the 125 car freighter that went past us while we were still at Hornepayne.

I was also pleased to discover that the snack bar had a decent selection of tea. In my sleep deprived fog I was so grateful for a cup of reasonable Darjeeling, it was ridiculous. And then I made another attempt at sleeping. This might have been sunset...

Caffiene. I need caffiene.

Or it might have been sunrise as we approached Winnipeg at an ungodly hour of the morning. I stumbled out of the station around 8am to find that August 1st is a public holiday and the bus I had planned on taking to my hostel wasn't running. I managed to locate a Starbucks though and pilfered the free WiFi for walking directions, backed up by the friendly coppers who mentioned that they'd never been in said hostel and that I should take that as a good thing. Nice guys.

At any rate, I made it to the hostel about 10am, having drunk an enormous cuppa in Starbucks and promptly gave up on any vague plans I had to make use of my day. Two nights on a train hadn't done anything for my energy levels, so I spent the day curled up reading. I felt somewhat more justified in my lethargy when a huge thunderstorm erupted over the city later in the day and carried on into the evening. I'm pretty sure The Storm which followed us around New Zealand a couple of years ago has caught up with me.

I'm on a boat! Again!

I spent the following day exploring the Manitoba Museum. A little bit dated in places, but more than made up for with some very awesome exhibits. Things like having a ship in the museum.

That is the Nonsuch, built in Appledore, Devon and then shipped across to Canada to commemorate one of the Hudson Bay Company's anniversaries. Mostly I just liked imagining it being filled with pirates even though that wasn't really its purpose. Overactive imagination strikes again.

There's also some very cool fossils and a great bit of geekery in the form of a section through the K-Pg boundary. This is the layer of rock which marks where the Cretaceous period ended and the Paleogene began. In itself, that doesn't sound very interesting and neither does the fact that the layer is rich in iridium. But consider that iridium is rare in the Earth's crust, which indicates an extraterrestrial origin, and it starts being more important. Rambling aside, the K-Pg boundary marks the impact of the asteroid (or possibly comet) that is generally accepted to have triggered the extinction of the dinosaurs. I got way too much joy from this tiny little brown band.

I also went in the planetarium, which was suitably trippy and made my head go funny. I fixed this by going in the science gallery next door and embracing my inner child. Interactive joy! Really silly things like making a very short stop motion film using a plastic dimetrodon and elephant. Well, I'm pretty sure it was a dimetrodon. I had one when I was little...

And then I found a great river bed model where you could position dams and trees to see how it affected the flow. Suffice to say I spent too much time playing with it and it was a good job there weren't any kids around. Especially when I got bored of doing the proper investigative stuff and decided to see how long it would take to overtop the dams. So I dammed both streams and waited and then had great joy in taking the dams out and watching the resulting flood.

I should have filmed it. My inner child was so happy.

And then I spent the evening chatting with one of the guys at the hostel. See, my social skills have definitely improved. I can hold a conversation with strangers now. Hostels are good for that.

So.Much.Food.

My final full day in Winnipeg I decided to check out the Forks, which was recommended by Renee who very kindly took me for Thai when I was in Hamilton. The Forks is a little area down behind the train station where the Red and Assiniboine Rivers meet.

[IMAGE]

There's some cool little shops and a whole variety of eating places. Much as I was tempted by the delicious smells coming from some of the international stalls, I eventually settled on the Original Pancake House. Seriously, I found it hard to resist the promise of bacon and maple syrup and pancakes. This is what I ended up having for lunch.

Two pancakes, two rashers of bacon, two beautifully done fried eggs, 2 rounds of toast and a heap of hash browns (fried potatoes). Plus, of course, maple syrup and whipped butter. I surprised myself by eating it all and then had to make sure I walked around for a good while afterwards to work some of it off. That wasn't too hard - there's a lovely park in the Forks.

Satisfied that I'd at least started to burn off my carb/sugar/fat laden lunch, I settled down on a bench and read for a while. I've started enjoying this - just finding a quiet place  to sit and read and watch the world go by. Very relaxing.

I would have walked up to Assiniboine Park after that but as soon as I got out of the shade it was way too warm and even more so by the time I'd got back to the hostel. I planned instead to head out later on and visit the Museum of Human Rights, since it would've been free that evening.

I ended up curling up with my book again and having random conversations with fellow hostellers. At about 7pm I tried to convince myself to move. It's a good job I failed, because not long after The Storm made a reappearance. Insane lightning storm carried on until after I'd gone to bed. So glad I didn't go out.

Tea Turbulence

Thursday morning I managed to drag myself out of bed at a respectable hour, make some sandwiches, pack my bag, empty the last of my box of 80 tea bags into my emergency tea tin and make it down to the station with nearly 2 hours until my train.

I needn't have worried so much about getting to the station in plenty of time. The train was in the station when I arrived, but we didn't leave until about half an hour after the scheduled departure. Not that I'm complaining - it could stay late for all I cared, given that it was due into Edmonton at 6:22am the next morning. Too early.

On and on, went the train. I had to turn my music up louder because the guy behind me was total looney tunes. Not a term I use often, but he really was. Kept rambling at the woman across from him about god and the devil and demons and how money is the root of evil. If it had been coherent, it might have been interesting. As it was, it was making me uncomfortable.

I rectified said discomfort with loud music (In This Moment is excellent for this) and a surprisingly reasonably priced cup of Darjeeling. Yum. Unfortunately about 10 minutes after I sat down with my cuppa, it leapt off its seat on the windowsill and launched itself at me. I have an ouchy knee as a result, but at least the lid kept most of the tea in the cup. Still, I dislike that I managed to lose tea.

My otherwise boring day was interrupted by the arrival of a couple of kids in my personal space. I have no idea why they decided to talk to me and anyone who knows me can tell you I'm not great with children, but I ended up spending most of the evening with them and their mum playing Uno of all things. A very pleasant surprise.

Oh, and I also saw some bison. No photos though - I was busy trying to remember how to play Uno!

The bus takes how long?!

After an almost comfortable night's sleep, I woke to the news that the train was running 2 and a half hours late due to all the freight traffic we'd encountered. No worries - I figured that meant more chance of finding an open Tim Horton's/Starbucks to filch free Wi-Fi from.

As it is, I found that Edmonton's train station is quite a long way out of the city centre, unlike Toronto and Winnipeg, and although there were public transport options available, they would have taken at least an hour so I ended up taking a cab to the hostel which took about 20 minutes. This is the first time I've taken a cab on my own. I was very proud of myself.

So now I'm planning on spending my day doing some more reading, replenishing my groceries and planning the US leg of the trip because, jeez, that's loomed up all of a sudden! I then have another 3 days to explore Edmonton before I get back on the train one last time to head for Vancouver.

Rocky Mountain scenery, here I come.