Up to Jasper, the trip was by tour bus; at Jasper we boarded the Rocky Mountaineer. I had expected this to be the highlight, but really the Icefield Parkway of the day before was the best of the trip–I even thought of suggesting they do the tour in the reverse order. The train would have been better as introduction; it wasn’t long in the national park or even in the Rockies, though we traveled the Rockies Trench where the Columbia River has its source (not where we could see it though).
Much of the view was trees, and then the second day started out rainy. Luckily it did clear up. And it seemed that when there was a view it was on the other side of the train. The last two photos above are exceptions where the view came to the right. There was a viewing car we could walk to and an area between cars for better viewing–the latter was crowded.
Views got more dramatic in the afternoon of the second day when we emerged from rain forest and headed into desert at Fraser Canyon.
Note the sagebrush in the foreground.
The green of the irrigated field was quite a contrast.
It was a long slow descent–partly for photographing and partly for safety. It was one of the longest stretches of 2% descent. That didn’t sound so dramatic to me until I read that because of the weight of a train, even 1% can be challenging.
Because there had been a mudslide that made the tracks impassible, we transferred from train to bus shortly after this canyon to get to Whistler. After an overnight and a morning in Whistler we continued by train to Vancouver, BC.
More improved scenery, this time from an old time open air viewing car.
This was the highest bridge on the line.
Vancouver, BC, is a city I will be returning to. The nature of tours is two hours in a museum where I could spend all day. We visited the Museum of Anthropology at the University, the Vancouver Museum, and the Vancouver Art Gallery. There were more.
And that concludes the trip photos. It is time to get back to quilting.
knitNkwilt 