USA: Can I have my fingerprints back, please?

Oh my. Nearly 3 months into this trip and I've finally reached my third country. I'm currently in Alaska, where I've spent much of the last week after saying toodle-pip to my Mum and sister. However, I think I left the last post in a bit of an odd place, so let's finish that off, shall we?

Why do you look so worried?

Wow. So, Saturday was our final day with Wes, our (almost) trusty RV. After nearly 2 weeks of driving around the Rockies in which he'd nearly killed us with carbon monoxide, stalled repeatedly and nearly lost a wing mirror, we had to deliver him back to the hire company in Calgary. On the way I spotted a dead elk...

Anyways, we dropped Wes off and then made our way into the city to the fancy hotel Mum had booked for our last night together before she and Amy flew back to the UK. Oh, and I mean fancy. Look at the shiny.

The Fairmont Palliser, originally built by the Canadian Pacific Railway (them again), hence the swank. Anyways, we couldn't actually get into our room because we were much too early, so we dropped the bags and headed out to explore.

Calgary is an odd little place. It's quiet. Very quiet. We popped into a little diner to have lunch - more pancakes for me. Om nom nom.

And then went down to the Eau Claire market, which was just as dead as the city centre. As was the lovely park on the island in the river.

Hmm.

After a very relaxed day, we headed out to the 1988 Olympic Park. This was the winter olympics that Eddie the Eagle was at as well as the famous Jamaican bobsleigh team whose exploits inspired Cool Runnings.

Yeah... bobsleigh... we went in a bobsleigh. Down the '88 track. Piloted by the Aussie team's pilot. Clocked something like 78mph on the way down.

It was awesome. Slightly terrifying at points. I mean, I'm short. You're supposed to keep your head up so you can see which way the bends are going, but I struggled at times. Too short to see past Mum. Resulted in a couple of bounces of my thankfully helmet-clad noggin off the sides.

So cool. Definitely recommend it.

We also had a go at the scooter luge they have on the site. Much less terrifying, very much fun. Although I did get stuck behind Amy who appeared to be driving like a granny. This is coming from me, the woman who managed to ram herself repeatedly into the wall many years ago on a kid's ride at a theme park in Germany. I should have been the one pootling along worrying about corners. I wasn't. I was sitting impatiently behind my little sister, wondering why she was going so slow and wincing every time someone overtook us.

Ah well. I had fun. I would have gone back for another go, but Mum and Amy weren't interested and there was a big old rain cloud rolling in.

Indeed, as we waited for the taxi to arrive, the rain started. Fortunately we found a tiny bit of shelter with these little signs about Olympic events.

We were trying to come up with creative names for them. Mum had an accidental un-PC moment when she titled the last one "competitive hopping" and I had to point out that the icon was actually for disabled sport, so yes, the figure did only have one leg. We thought it was quite funny afterwards.

And then Tim's for tea and a night in a nice, big, comfy bed. Ahhh.

My credit card is crying

Tim's, yet again, for breakfast. Followed by a trip to the Calgary Tower, which is like the CN Tower, only littler and much less crowded. And cheaper. And you get an audio guide included in the price. Take that, CN Tower.

Anyways, there are excellent views from the top and the audio guide is pretty awesome. Lots of interesting stories about the history of the city.

After that, it was time to say goodbye to Mum and Amy who had to catch their flight back to the UK. I headed off solo again, this time to a hostel just down the road from the hotel.

I spent the evening fighting with booking sites, trying to sort out a bit more of the US leg of my trip. I should have done this weeks ago, in preparation for dealing with whatever immigration questions I might face trying to enter the US. But no, I had to leave it until the night before my flight.

Fortunately, everything behaved in the end and I got everything booked for the first 2 weeks of my US leg. My credit card, as a result, was a bit shocked.

I spent my final night in Calgary trying to get some sleep in anticipation of an early start the next morning. I was rather foiled by the girl in the bunk beneath mine who snored. All night. Non-stop. Ugh.

Should I have a stamp?

Said snoring roommate meant that I was a right grump when I crawled out of bed at 5am the next morning. After a remarkably long (but cheap) bus ride to the airport, I got checked in and went to face the US Customs and Border Protection officers at pre-clearance.

There I was, all prepared with my tablet full of downloaded ticket confirmations, bank statements and travel insurance. The guy looks at me, takes my passport and tells me to put my hand on the scanner. So now the USA has my fingerprints. He hands back my passport. Sans stamp or anything to indicate how long I'm allowed to stay. He waves me away.

What the fuck?

Anyway, it's still only just gone 7am and I haven't had any caffeine, so I think nothing really of the fact that my passport has no stamp. Grabbed a Tim's for breakfast (probably my final Tim's for a long time, sad times).

Onto the plane, which is a little regional jet thing. Very tight on space. Uneventful flight, save the 40 minutes we spent sitting on the taxiway waiting for our gate, which I spent chatting to the guy next to me about travel.

And then I was in Seattle. I'd been told at the airport in Calgary that my bag was checked all the way through, so I figured I'd just go to the gate for my flight to Anchorage. Cabin crew on the plane disagreed, saying that anyone getting a connecting flight had to collect their bags, recheck them and go through security.

As a result, my sleep-deprived, caffeine starved self was just a little bit confused when I got off the plane and had to go in search of some sort of customer service person to help me. They confirmed that I could just go to the next gate. Hurrah.

Still, I was a bit worried about that security thing...

Obviously this wasn't too much of a problem, because I got on the plane with no problem and then spent a lovely few hours watching Disney films. Yay.

No security to go through at Anchorage, which confused the hell out of me, so I had to make use of the free Wi-Fi to make sure that I hadn't somehow managed to skip security at one of the three airports and that it was quite all right not to have a stamp in my passport. Google (and the US government websites) said, yes, that's fine, calm down.

And then I spent the afternoon lazing at the hostel. Oh, and I met an Eskimo lady. I should point out that she called herself an Eskimo lady, which surprised me because I was taught at school that Eskimo is a somewhat derogatory term. She was lovely.

Anchorage, why are you so warm?!

I spent my first morning in Anchorage having the most delightful lie-in. Oh, it was glorious. Hurray, catching up on sleep.

I then attempted to bring the blog up to date. I failed. Epically. So instead of moping around the hostel, I took a walk into the city and visited the Anchorage Museum.

Glad I did. A big chunk of the museum is closed for renovations at the moment, but the parts that are still open are brilliant. There's an excellent display covering the major native groups that live in the state, with some really interesting artefacts.

The gallery had quite a bit of input from Alaska Natives, from what I could gather, which I think is wonderful.

There's also a great section downstairs that's clearly aimed at kids, but I couldn't resist. My inner child had great fun playing with all the interactive displays. I even made a very short stop motion film featuring a couple of moose and a bear...

And of course, the obligatory infra-red camera.

As I left the museum, it was still way too warm. I had rather imagined Anchorage (and Alaska in general) to be a bit cooler, but it's been over 20 degrees every day so far, I think.

The Day Of Nothing

I actually have no idea where this day went. I think I probably wrote a blog post. And then read. A lot. Definitely read a lot. And nothing else. Productive much. I think I just needed a day (or three) to chill.

Hablas Espanol?

First, I realised that the hostel, which provides free breakfast, has a waffle maker and the staff actually provide the waffle mix. Which meant syrupy waffles for breakfast. Om nom nom.

After another lazy morning, I decided I couldn't just spend all day doing bugger all again, so I took myself for a walk along Chester's Creek. When I GoogleMapped this, it came out at about 3.5 miles for my planned route. It should have taken me just over an hour.

I'm pretty sure I did it in about 45 minutes, so either I went a different way or Google lied to me. Possibly a bit of both. At least I got out in the fresh air for a bit, but jeez, Alaska, why are you so warm?!

I spent the rest of the afternoon refreshing my Spanish. I had a bit of a freak out when I realised it's now less than a month until I plan to be in Peru so I thought I'd best brush up on my very rudimentary language skills. So far, my go to phrase is "Lo siento. No entiendo." (I'm sorry. I don't understand). This can be followed by either:

"Hablas Ingles?"

Or:

"Hablas mas despacio, por favor."

Basically, if anyone tries to talk to me, I'm screwed. Maybe.

You're welcome, Miss Zoe

After a day of apparently not doing anything other than farting about trying to learn Spanish, I made the effort to find something to do. This may have been partially spurred on by questions over breakfast from fellow guests about my plans for the day. Of which I had none at that point.

I ended up going into the city and taking the trolley bus tour. The sales chap insisted on calling me Miss Zoe, which I found both odd and sort of adorable. The tour itself was actually pretty interesting and included all sorts of little nuggets from the former school teacher who was our guide.

Passed by Earthquake Park, which was a section of the city which slipped quite a long way towards the inlet during the huge 1964 Good Friday Earthquake. We also got a glimpse of Denali, the mountain from which Denali National Park gets its name. Not bad, considering Denali is over 100 miles from Anchorage.

Also passed by the huge numbers of small planes that fly out of Anchorage. Apparently Alaska is home to half of the small planes in the USA. That's pretty impressive.

And then lunch, before I popped in to book a cruise around Prince William Sound to see all the glaciers. ALL THE GLACIERS. Hopefully I'll also see some wildlife. That'd be nice. Maybe whales again...

I spent the rest of the afternoon in the Visitor Centre, mostly watching the many films they have about Alaska's wildlife, its history and the aforementioned 9.2 magnitude earthquake. That was a few hours well spent, and free to boot.

Basically, my first almost-week in Anchorage has been relaxed. Surprisingly, my travel brain hasn't been yelling at me to get out and do things, so clearly I did need to take a break. No worries though - plans for next week include the cruise I booked and possible visits to the Alaska Native Heritage Center and maybe the zoo. Should keep me busy. Plus I have lots more Spanish to catch up on.

A few more days in Anchorage and then on to the lower 48!

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: Lions & Tigers & Bears, Oh My!

Hola! I'm currently enjoying a few days of almost-laziness in Hamilton, about an hour from Toronto. I figured I've been on the go almost non-stop since I left the UK nearly 6 weeks ago, so I should probably just slow down for a bit. Hamilton's a fairly quiet place and the hostel I'm in only takes 10 guests, so I have the place almost to myself. Very nice.

Anyway, I should probably get back to updating what I've been up to since last week, shouldn't I? Yeah. That's probably a good idea.

The sparrows are up to something...

Having just said that I haven't really stopped since I left the UK, I must admit that's a little bit of a fib, since I spent most of last Saturday sitting in Queen's Park in Toronto reading. It was a lovely sunny day, much too hot to be doing much walking around, so I took myself and my tablet to the park and spent a few hours reading and people watching. Really peaceful, although I did feel oddly guilty about not doing any exploring. How strange.

Stuff the Panda, Save the Salamander

Fortunately, any annoyance that my travel brain might have had with me for not exploring was made up for on Sunday when I went to the zoo. This first meant I had to negotiate Toronto's public transport system, helped by the friendly man at the subway station who gave me very clear instructions as to which trains and buses to take.

Nearly 2 hours later, having taken a bus that very much felt like it was a "local bus for local people", I arrived at the zoo. What else to say? I spent all day there, somehow managed not to get sunburnt or dehydrated and generally squee'd at all the animals. Like this Panamanian Golden Frog, a species that might be extinct in the wild (but I'm not going to rant about that again...)

I also saw an otter (species not remembered) which I'm pretty sure was exhibiting stress/boredom behaviours. Y'know, swimming around the same circuit again. And again. And again. Much to the delight of the other visitors, much to my concern.

Also a beautiful lion pride. These guys are a white colour morph - they're not albinos, it's just a variant. Like having blonde versus brown hair. Beautiful colour and this guy was just asking to be photographed.

Orangutans are a favourite of mine and my dad's, so just for him, here's the really cruddy photos I managed of the rangy tangles.

I also got the pleasure of seeing one of the keepers doing training with a Sumatran Tiger. The tiger, called Harry, managed to do sit, down and up, but seemed to be having trouble with "open". I wondered if it was a new command he was learning and if the crowd hadn't been so huge, I wanted to ask the keeper about it. Ah well.

Aaaaand, that has helpfully not turned the right way. You might need to watch it sideways...

What else? The zoo's pretty huge and there were so many amazing animals I'm not sure what to include here. Especially since half of the things I find interesting, most people don't. Like that frog up there.

Oh, this grizzly bear trying to eat an apple. Because it made me smile.

The only things I don't have photos of that I think others might have liked are the pandas. I don't expecially like pandas. Yes, they are threatened by habitat destruction, but they're also an evolutionary dead end - seriously, they are bears that exclusively eat a plant that even herbivores would struggle to digest. Toronto Zoo currently has a panda pair and they've recently had cubs. I'm sure they're very cute, but I wasn't willing to spend an hour and half queuing to see an animal that I have such a bad opinion of. There are other animals just as deserving of the amount of money ploughed into panda conservation that don't get it because they're not appealling. Like that frog up there. Again.

Rant over. I think that's quite enough about the zoo now, don't you think? Oh, I should point out that the "stuff the panda, save the salamander" comment is from the brilliant zoologist Lucy Cooke, also known as the Amphibian Avenger and founder of the popular Slothville blog.

I'M ON A BUS! AGAIN!

The next day I had yet another bus trip to look forward to. I'm getting good at these. I'm even getting good at dealing with the irritation when the bus is delayed for an hour. How very dare it? Especially since I spent that hour standing in the yard at the bus terminal in 30 degree heat with a whole load of bus exhausts being grotty around me. Eww.

Anyway, the bus finally arrived and I made it, somewhat later than planned, to Niagara, on the border with the US. According to my notes, I spent a large part of the evening laughing at the angry man who the front desk refused to check in because he had no ID. Evidently, this was an uneventful day. That's the problem with all these buses - I get on the bus thinking I'll do some exploring when I get to my destination. Then I get off the bus and I just want to sit down with a cuppa  and a book and then go to bed. I don't know what they pump into the air con on those things, but they make me sleepy.

It's like Blackpool but more interesting

Lethargy was out of the window the next morning, no matter how much I really wanted to stay in bed. I've been to Niagara before and I know how busy it gets, so I planned on getting into town fairly early before the crowds got too mad. First stop, the classic boat trip into the mists at the base of Horseshoe Falls.

Very quick geography lesson: the Niagara River forms the border between the US and Canada in this area. Horseshoe Falls are on the Canadian side, American Falls are on the US side. Horseshoe Falls are the bigger of the two and the one that all the boats focus on. Because the Canadians obviously have the better falls...

Anyhoo, here is me in my snazzy red mist poncho waiting to get on the boat. I should mention that it was already pushing 30 degrees at this point (about 11am) so those plastic ponchos are like being in a greenhouse.

Fortunately, almost as soon as the boat sets off, you get attacked by spray and mist, so all is good. Here we are in the mist at the base of the falls.

Hard to get a sense of scale on that, so here's one I took from the top later in the day with another of the boats for scale.

And here's American Falls looking stunning.

I spent about an hour after that sitting in the cafe behind the dock, people watching. Most relaxing after spending so long standing in the queue myself. Nicely chilled and rehydrated, I headed a bit further along towards the falls to re-visit another attraction, the "Journey Behind the Falls". Basically, when the town was first building up, someone thought it would be a great idea to dig a tunnel so that you could see the falls from behind. Turned out to be awesome, although the original tunnel now opens out into a viewing deck next to the falls because the river has eroded so far back in the 100+ years since the tunnel was built.

Pretty awesome being able to stand that close to such a huge torrent of water. Anyway, they've dug some more tunnels since then, so you can still go in and see the back of the falls. Not that there's much to see.

Nice wall of white you've got there. The noise is incredible though, and hey, I had to show off the snazzy yellow poncho I got to replace the red one from the boat. I totally have not kept the yellow poncho. Nope. Definitely not...

Having somehow managed not to get too soggy, I made my way back to the surface and further along the river away from the crowds. Found myself a nice peaceful spot to have lunch.

Right next to the first Canadian owned hydro-electric plant on the river. It looks like a stately home. They should open it as a museum or something - I'd love to see inside there.

After the hour or so walk back to the hostel and a leisurely tea, I headed north out of the hostel to see if I could find the whirlpool area of the river. Which I did, but the undergrowth next to the path is so thick it's hard to get a good view. And no, I was not willing to pay nearly $20 to take a ride on the Aero Car which would've given me a great view. Niagara is expensive and I figured I'd already spent enough for the day on the boat and the tunnels.

You can still just about make out the whirlpool in the bottom left. Plus the walk was lovely. Following the walk up to the whirlpool, I grabbed my Gorillapod from the hostel and headed back into town. Both falls are lit up every night and I wanted to see if I could get some good shots. I succeeded.

I'm so proud of that photo. I think it's probably my favourite of the trip so far. Shows what I can do when I actually think about the settings on my camera instead of just pointing and clicking.

Overall, I think I made the most of my one day at Niagara!

Relaxation? What's that?

Good job I did, because the next morning I had to get a horribly early bus to my next destination. I still don't remember why I booked such an early bus. Maybe it was the cheapest? At any rate, I was back on the bus at 7:50am, a bus which was by some stroke of luck running on time despite having come across from the US and therefore presumeably having to stop at the border.

One change of buses (seriously, why did I book this bus? There are direct buses from Niagara to Hamilton...) and about 4 hours later (seriously?!) I arrived in the city of Hamilton, which is between Toronto and Niagara (and thus makes it ridiculous that I had to get a bus back to Toronto to then get another bus to Hamilton...)

It was much too warm in Hamilton and after such a long day in Niagara the day before, I decided I was going to relax. Which meant planning the next steps of my trip and freaking out about accommodation in Yellowstone. Fortunately I also decided to treat myself to some cheap donuts and Coke (I've pretty much just been drinking tea and water since June...). It is ridiculous how much joy I got from that.

My travel brain is guilt tripping me

Having had a look at what there is in Hamilton, I've decided to take my dad's advice and use the couple of days I have here to just chill out for a bit. I couldn't stop entirely though, because for some reason my brain likes to make me feel guilty if I just sit around for a few hours doing nothing travel related. So yesterday I visited Dundurn Castle in the afternoon having spent the morning catching up with random bits of news and finishing a book. And writing most of this post.

Dundurn Castle is, I suspect, one of the oldest surviving buildings in Hamilton. It was completed in 1835 and was, at the time, the largest home in the city. It's not a castle. It's more like a stately home.

Harold had to dive in there and hide the annoying crowd of people in the corner. Anyway, it's certainly trying to be stately. The interiors have been restored to what they would have been like in 1855, which means fancy wallpaper and plush furnishings upstairs.

I was more interested in the downstairs areas and that's totally nothing to do with the free food on offer down there... Definitely not.

So many preserves! And there were nice fresh veggies on offer in the kitchen for dunking. And pickled beetroot (which is one of my favouritest things, oddly). I discovered kohlrabi is actually quite nice. Mm. Hey, I'm on a budget - I'm not going to turn down free food, even if it is just nibbles.

After my guided tour of the house I went to check out the kitchen garden, which is absolutely beautiful but made me really miss my own garden, so I had to run away.

I finished my visit with a quick trip to the Hamilton Military Museum. Fascinating little place and I really wish I'd spent more time there. As it is, I rather rushed round. Ah well.

At least with my urge to explore satisfied for a while, I managed to spend the rest of the day chilling out at the hostel.

I'm on a boat!

Today, on my final full day in Hamilton, I have once again failed to do nothing all day. Instead, I had a lazy morning and then went down to the bay to explore HMCS Haida. Haida's the last surviving Tribal-class destroyer out of the original 27 built. She saw service in the Second World War and then again in Korea.

It cost me less than $4 and you get to see pretty much the entire ship, including the engine room which just had way too many things I wanted to touch...

Fortunately I resisted the urge to work out how to make it go (which clearly wouldn't have worked even if I'd tried...). On my walk home I spotted this excellent sign outside a church.

I agree - it is too warm. I think I'm getting used to it though. It's pushing 30 degrees again in Hamilton today and yet I didn't feel too disgusting after walking around for an hour.

I am also making slow improvement on my social skills - staying in hostels helps, because you're almost guaranteed to end up talking to one of your fellow guests. This is great, because it means I now have even more suggestions of things to see and do on my trip. Hurrah!

I've also been taking part in Camp NaNoWriMo again this month and I've taken these last couple of days as an added bonus to get more writing done. I wanted to see whether I would have the time to take part in the main NaNoWriMo event come November. Well, I've written over 25,000 words so far without even trying too hard, so I'll take that as a yes. Roll on November and yet another attempt to "overachieve" - that is, to write more than the 50,000 word standard goal.

Yes, I have weird life goals. I don't care.

Anyway, on Saturday I'll be boarding a train bound for Winnipeg. I'll arrive there on Monday, spend a few days recovering and exploring, before re-boarding the train to Edmonton. After another few days there, I'll get back on the train for a final time to take me to Vancouver.

That makes it sound like my Canadian adventure is coming to an end. No worries - I've got until the end of August yet!