All Aboard!!!

  I’m hitting the rails as I traverse all of Canada from East to West. That’s right folks, I’ve added trains to my repertoire of travel conveyance. I’m boarding the Via Rail Trans Canadian Railroad from Toronto to Vancouver. Yep, 5 days on the rails and let me quickly say: Don’t do it! 

It’s a prison transport, is what it is!

  OK, I might be overly dramatic but if only I could’ve filmed my initial reaction upon seeing my room aboard the train. As the steward slid open the door to my single “couchette”, my eyes widened and my mouth gaped open: a teenie tiny sink and a toilet to the left and a mini banquette (think of a seat in a restaurant booth) incorporated into the folding Murphy style bed to the right. Then I heard him pointing out the window and saying, “you got a window, you got.” And that’s when I thought to myself, “what the fuck have I gotten myself into. And I’m on this thing for the next 5 days!!” Cue the head tilt and the eye roll.

  It’s a tiny space, literally the size of a single bed; 4 feet wide (door to window) and 6 feet long (head to toe). To prep the bed, you need to stand near the door, by the sink and slowly lower the bed from the wall until it rests on top of the toilet and locks into place. The little triangular cut out at the foot of the bed allows space for you and the tiny sink as it scrapes your belly on the way down. Oh and if you need to pee in the middle of the night, the option is to either shuffle down to the public toilet two train cars away, or stand in the corner, suck in your gut and raise your Murphy bed! And yes, you read correctly, the toilet is in the room. It took some getting used to but after awhile, there was a perverse pleasure in taking a shit, while looking out the window and waving to passersby. Like I said, perverse! But that’s what prison does to a person.

  Now to the train itself: maybe it’s the romantic in me (did I just hear a collective “hah!”?) but I expected a bit more wood trim, velour, leather; you know, the train scenes from countless Agatha Christie novels and films. Instead I got lots of steel, steel rivets, old cloth seats, and green-ish pleather. So sad. I can’t overstate my utter disappointment. 

The Train Ride

First day:

  Met quite a few of my fellow passengers. There were two communal carriages: a dining car and a combo lounge/game table car with an observation deck above. The dining car had tables of four so as a single, I would lunch and dine with different people every day. That was the pleasant part and the food was absolutely excellent; that gets high marks.

First night:

  Bru…wait for it…Tal!! 

I’ve never been on a train that rocked so much from side to side. It even went up and down. It felt like riding a bronco!! It also tilted into turns so I would be slammed into the left wall, then into the right wall. Yeah, no sleep the first night! And I’m paying for all this….sheesh!

Day 2:

  I learned that we were traveling on freight rails. Long story short, freight trains have the right of way, and these ones are long; some over 2-miles. This passenger train had to stop at various cut-offs along the way in order to let them pass as there’s only 1 rail line at most times. This makes travel excruciatingly slow and is the reason we got into Winnipeg 3 hours late. On a Monday night at midnight, not much open and not much to do but wave at the city and sigh disconsolately from the observation deck. 

Day 3:

  Breakfast and the train is stopped. Nothing new there. However, once lunch was announced we all noticed that the train hadn’t moved at all. Over 3 hours! We’d been waiting for 2 freight trains to pass by. Now we’re 7 hours behind schedule. So to make up for time, the city stops that were planned were simply eliminated: the 2 hours in Saskatoon, pared back to a 20 minute fuel stop. Ditto for Edmonton on Day 4.

  The scenery is rolling hills to the south and flat prairie land to the north for hours and hours and hours and hours…

Day 4:

  Arriving in the Rockies in the afternoon. At first we were afraid that we’d be doing this portion at night and what a waste that would’ve been, but we’re so far behind schedule that we actually get to Jasper National Park mid-day and have a good 6 hours of daylight chugging up and down the Rocky Mountains. Beautiful scenery with snow capped mountains framing every window.

Day 5: 

  End of the trip is even more excruciating. The train terminal is in sight but do we get there? Hah…no dice! We stop, we start, then stop again. We crawl, we inch, we plod along the outskirts of Vancouver to finally arrive 12 hours late. What an ordeal! 

  And it didn’t end there. I linked up the train trip to a cruise to Alaska, setting off from Vancouver the next day. Wouldn’t you know it, the cruise ship left 9 hours late out of Vancouver! Will anything leave or arrive on time on this trip?? I’ve had trips before where all flowed fluidly: This isn’t one of them.

Alaska

  I met lots of passengers the first few days who kept raving about Alaska and how this was their 5th, 9th, 20th time to the 49th state. By the end of the cruise, I wanted to find them and ask them WHY? The towns we visited were just 1880s style mining towns that you can find all over the Western US: Colorado, California, etc., with the exception that they were partly built on stilts clinging to the rocky shoreline. Nothing spectacular so far. 

  The arrival into Juneau was marred by the fact that we were the 4th cruise ship to dock in the bay, so a city of 30,000 was overrun, in one afternoon, by over 10,000 tourists! What a mess!

  Once the cruise ended and the ship docked near Anchorage, I was off to Denali National Park where I spent 4 additional days touring it and several other Alaskan towns. We kept being reminded that we were part of the 30 percenters because everyday we saw Mt. Denali whereas most visitors to Alaska never get to see it because it’s usually shrouded in clouds. Is this why people kept coming back, I was wondering? But again, I still couldn’t find these returnees because, of course, I was now only surrounded by first timers. 

  Off to Denali N.P. and, well, it was nice but overall, meh. I know, I sound so jaded but hear me out. The distances are simply too vast to appreciate any of the beauty. The land is Taiga which is completely frozen, i.e. permafrost, starting at about 3 feet underground. Tree roots can’t go deep so they fan out, palm tree style. This then creates rather skinny trees, stunted shrubs and a few hardy flowers. In a terrain such as this, I don’t have the eye of a botanist that can wax poetic about the various strands of moss, which is everywhere, by the way. I just see land that slowly slopes up for miles and miles. It made me realize how much I had enjoyed visiting Yosemite N.P. where everything is within one picture frame: El Capitan, Half Dome, a river here, the trees there all within sight of the walking trail. That was doable, all within reach, pocket-sized if you will, but this, Denali, it’s too big, too far, too open.  

  So this is my tale of the great white north. Not the best trip I’ve taken. It did, however, recalibrate my sense of exploration and reminded me that not all of my trips will blow me away. Some will be ho-hum and that’s OK.