The wheels on the train go round and round all the live long day...

June 9, 2015

Well, we are three hours in on the train.  So far we have had lunch, played three games of dominoes and stared out the window.  But I am getting ahead of myself.

Yesterday we left for the airport.  We arrived in good time and got our boarding passes.  As we were heading into White Spot for breakfast, I mentioned that it was strange that the ticket lady didn’t ask for out ID.  This is when mom realized that she didn’t have any picture ID.  So, while Chris and I enjoyed out breakfast, Mom had to do a mad dash back to the house (in rush hour traffic).  She made it back in time and we walked up to the gate, right onto the back of the boarding line and onto the plane like it was all planned.  Uneventful flight, quick turnaround in Calgary and another uneventful flight to Winnipeg.  

We took a cab to the hotel (Days Inn) and discovered that they pay for the taxi so that was nice.  $7 bucks saved.  Room was standard airport hotel chic.   We took a walk around even though it was stinking hot.  The area around the airport is even less inspired than the rest of Winnipeg.  Lots of furniture shops.  We found a Superstore and bought some chips for watching tv later.  When we left the hotel, we had asked if there are any restraurants in the area.  The desk guy listed Denny’s, Smitty’s, Subway, McDonald’s.  We went to Denny’s.  Winnipeg, you really have to up your restaurant game. 

We were back to the room by 7pm.  We were both so tired we tried to watch tv but there was nothing on so we just went to bed at 8:30. I listened to my awesome borrowed IPod (if anyone has an extra $179, my birthday is only 8 months away).  Mom read but I think we were both asleep by 9:30, which is saying something since Winnipeg is two hours ahead. 

This morning we had our ‘free with room’ breakfast – waffle iron! We got to the train station by 11am and our VIA lady from last year was still there.  This time she let us on the train.  The entire train is 3 cars, the cabin car, the ‘restaurant’ car and economy.  We haven’t been to economy yet.  Our cabin is wee.  It has two chairs, one window, one not.  We are taking turns with window.  It has a tiny sink and a tiny bathroom.  There is a storage area up top but neither of us can reach it so our stuff is strewn about, just like home. 

Via check in, with Sylvie from last year

Waiting for the train in the new refurbished train station

Alllll Abooooaaaard!!

Our cabin

Our Window

Dining Car

 Our meals are not great.  We both had a microwaved sandwich (why microwaved?, we assume they were frozen), an instant coffee, a snack can of Pringles and a Coffee Crisp.  We both felt like we had eaten at 7-11.  But it will be fine, we only have two lunches on our trip.  Dinner looks better, still frozen, but better.

Dinner

Lunch

Window birding list: nothing great: Canada Goose, Redwinged Blackbird, Killdeer, Mourning Dove, American Crow, Mallard.  I assume this will get better as we go north, and get awesome when we get to Churchill.

Farmland of south Manitoba and/or Saskatchewan

Largest Coke can in Canada (World?)

Same day - 10:20 pm

We are at a standstill in Rink, or maybe some unnamed town north or west of Rink.  I don’t have any idea where we are, really.  It turns out we are somewhere in Saskatchewan.  I didn’t realize our route took us out of Manitoba.  Our westward direction gave us a beautiful view of the setting sun.  It is quick hazy with forest fire smoke so the sun was an incredible red as is sank into the horizon.  My camera did not do it justice so you will have to take my word. The sky never turned red, just the blood red sun.

The scenery here is lovely.  Lots of farms and once we got north (or west, did I mention I don’t know where we are), we came upon rolling hills and forest with tiny lakes.  Beautiful.  I can sit in the window seat for hours.  Wildlife spotted so far:   a huge rabbit, a huge deer, and an average sized fox.  New birds since last update; Northern Harrier, Yellow headed blackbird (new!), Merlin, Magpie, Northern Shoveler.

We stopped in Dauphin for a few minutes (if you look this up, you will know more about our location than I do), to pick up some new passengers.  I discovered that we have three economy cars.  Currently there are only about 15 people on the train.  Me and mom and an older couple in two of the cabins, three people in the sleeper car (?), and maybe 7 or 8 in economy.  Plus two staff, Tracey and Denis.  I asked Denis why so many economy cars.  He assured me that after Thompson, we would be full.  A lot of people back and forth between Thompson, Churchill and the villages between.  Tracey said that this route is an essential service, if it wasn’t it would be cancelled.  Lucky for us.   Tracey later told us that Via loses about $400 per passenger on this route.   Take it while you can.

Past the farmland (mostly)

Beaver Dam

Beaver House

After the excitement of Dauphin (none), we had dinner.   Dinner was an improvement on lunch, still microwaved but tasty.   Mom had Coconut Thai Chicken, I had Chicken Dijon with rice pilaf.  Plus a pop, a bun and a bag of two-bite brownies.  Did I mention that the kitchen services starts next week? 

More window staring, more dominos and then Tracey put our beds down at about 9:30.  The whole room to bed transition is a bit of an engineering feat.  Now mom is tucked in on the top bunk and I am about to peel myself away from the window and get into bed too.  It is getting dark so no more scenery.

Window Gazing

Tracey putting our beds down

Dominoes

June 10, 5pm

We are sitting in Thompson, waiting to leave in a few minutes.  Good time to try to update without the joggle of the train while I am typing.

Thompson Station

I woke up this morning around 7:30, mom around 8am.  It was a good sleep for me.  The rocking and white noise of a train lulls one to sleep quite nicely.  We had a barely satisfactory breakfast of instant oatmeal, yogurt and coffee.  And back to window gazing and dominoes.

When we first started out in the south, we were in farmland.  That lasted most of the day.  Today we are on the Canadian Shield.  The trees are short.  There are lots of birch.  There is something about birch trees, they are so beautiful and serene.  I can understand why they are such a popular subject of paintings.  The rough white trunks in contrast to the glossy green leaves reflecting the sun.  Birch mingle with pines and random other trees to create a lovely forest view.  For a while we were in beaver country.  We saw lots of evidence of them, fallen trees, dammed ponds, beaver houses, but alas, not actual beaver sightings as yet.  There are fewer of them now.

The rocky shield is starting to poke up out of the ground.  The dirt is so shallow here that the posts along the tracks have to be built as tripods, I assume because there isn’t enough dirt to plant them deep enough to keep them from falling over.  Not that the tripod works that well either, many are down on the ground, in the water or just disintegrated.  They don’t seem to be in use, all of the wires have been removed.  Now they are just another aspect of the landscape.

Barely any birds up here either.  Only new (for the train) ones are Raven and Barn Swallow.  A few ducks with babies but mostly Mallards.  We are going so slow it is easy to identify the close ones. We were supposed to get into Thompson at one o’clockish.   We were all pretty stoked because we could walk into town and shop a bit (they have Shoppers, Can Tire, Walmart, MacDonald’s etc) but we didn’t actually arrive until 4pm.  Mom and I walked into town.  We had been given an estimate of 10 minutes.  It took 20.  We saw the Canadian Tire sign and headed for that because we wanted a map of Manitoba so we might finally know where we are/were/will be.  But, despite the huge sign, we couldn’t find the store.  Shopper’s didn’t have one and neither did PetroCan.  We gave up and took a cab back to the train.  Good thing too since we only made it back with 7 minutes to spare (no way we would have walked back in time).

We are leaving the station so this will have to do for now. 

June 11.  (It is the end of our first day of birding but I will just finish up the train and go to bed.  I will have to do the next post in a couple of days.)

Thompson had been really warm but we heard that Churchill was around 3 or 4 degrees.  But better news was that the river was breaking up and some Belugas had been spotted. 

Another uneventful dinner and evening and early to bed.  I woke up at about 6:30am to a whole new world.  We were now in the tundra.  the only trees were stunted, lots of lichen and moss.  Flat, flat, flat.  Lakes and rocks, greens and oranges.  It is beautiful up here.  About an  hour south of Churchill, we passed the derailment.  Rail cars strewn about and ripped apart.  I can see why it took so long to get it cleared.

We got into Churchill Station at 9am and there were our Research station people to greet us. 

(Sorry, peeps, I can't upload my pictures and it is midnight and bird call is for 7am tomorrow so I give up, maybe tomorrow if they let us sit down for a minute.  I also can't make the spacing work.  Update - the pictures are up)