By the time we got past Edmonton, we were truly out of the Rockies. And it was flat, compared to them. I have felt in the past (I have been on the Prairies before, once to work for a month as a medical student), that for the two “ends” of the country, the land is mostly flat with hills going up from there. The prairies do this in reverse: they have flat land with river valleys going down from there. They are not flat at all, just different.
But it became boring, not through geography, but through just taking too much time. We began to count the hours late, sort of like notches on the bedpost. At one point, we were over twenty hours late. Now, this has some advantages: we arrived at Saskatoon some twenty hours late, which put it at about 10 PM. So I got to see the railway station there (big thrill, eh? When you are stuck on a train that late, you look for good stuff where you can find it!).
But it also meant that we had to make up time where we could. So our stop in Winnipeg was shortened a lot, and I didn’t get to re-visit the Canadian Museum for Human Rights, or the Forks area. Instead, I hung around inside the sttion and tried to get somw wifi for emails and such.
Leaving Winnipeg, it started to snow. And it snowed hard right to the Ontario border, then more lightly. In the end, we had snowy and cold conditions all across Northern Ontario, as far as Sudbury. This was particularly tough because Darlene, at home, was enjoying +20 degree weather. Oh well, such are the experiences of this big country!
In the end, we arrived in Toronto in the early morning, some 17 hours later than expected. Difficult for those making connections through Pearson, or to other trains going further East. But for me, it meant I got to sleep one more time on the train, and be ready to go when I got home.
No comments:
Post a Comment