Rocky Mountaineer – Day 1, Vancouver to Kamloops

---

********* HAPPY 18TH BIRTHDAY TRAVIS!!!!!!!!! **********

Today I wake up excited that it is the first day of the Rocky Mountaineer train ride through Canada, but I also wake up sad that today is Travis’ 18th birthday and we are so far away. I hope he knows that he will be in my thoughts (as he has been our whole trip), but being a teenage boy, he probably hasn’t given his mum a thought! I know he is surrounded by his good mates and Mum and Dad will be spending time with him.

We catch a taxi to train station with the craziest driver, he nearly ran a red light - perhaps it’s still a little early for him, or it has been a long night…

We check in and meet other passenger while having a cuppa and checking out all the souvenier bits and pieces there are to buy. We can see the train outside and all I want to do is get on it! It is huge and straight in front of the terminal are our carriages which are two levels with a glass dome roof so we have a view of heaven if we wanted it!

Finally we are okay to board. We are in the very first carriage sitting in the very front. As we had been planning it for so long, I e-mailed and asked for these seats so it’s was really nice for them to accommodate my request! It means that we overlook the single level carriages in front and the only thing in front of our seats is the staff area where they prepare our drinks and snacks etc. We are free to walk around up here as well.

We are introduced to our staff - upstairs we have Iain and Jocelyn and downstairs in the dining room there is Chan and Cadine. They are all nice and funny and during the trip they constantly update us on what is around, the history and where to look to see something in particular, like Ospray nests.

There is a 9 year old girl, Jane, whose parents aren’t really all that attentive to her who decides that she will be the ‘helper’ to the staff so she is always around the front area. I guess it’s not really a kids type of trip, especially considering her parents are happy to just do their own thing, her dad draws (really well actually) and her mum just seems to sleep and read, so Jane is kind of left to her own devices. So she helps the staff by folding napkins, hand out drinks, wiping down benches etc. Fortunately for everyone, she’s a lovely girl who you can tell just needs some positive feedback from someone in an authoritive position and the staff are absolutely wonderful in their patience and how they handle her. It seems obvious at times that she is kind of in their way but they just make do, they never say a bad word to her.

The meal sittings are divided into two seatings, today we are second and tomorrow we will be first. Since we have to wait for breakfast we are given the absolute most yummiest cinnamon scone I have ever tasted, even Tim enjoys it and he doesn’t like cinnamon! It is well worth waiting for breakfast!

For breakfast we are given a menu with choices of eggs and pancakes. And just in case there isn’t enough food already, there are also croissants on the table! We share our table with the nicest couple, although initially the wife was an i-Pad widow. She bought it for him for their anniversary and it’s taking over! He showed it to us when he came down and it does look neat, too hi-tech for me and Tim though!

The first couple of hours of the trip are mostly spent getting out of Vancouver and more industrious areas, so not too much to see.

As I said before, the crew talk about things as we come up to them. Their knowledge of the history in the area is incredible, you definitely want them on your table for a quiz night!

The scenery is absolutely spectacular, it’s like we are driving through a postcard! The beautiful snow capped mountains, the thick forests full of pine trees, Bald Eagles overlooking the water, the raging rivers with water the colour of an light blue ice cube, the lakes that are like mirrors - so flat and clear and endless, the small country houses that dot along the rivers and lakes…. The whole place is just magical.

The track is so windy and the train is so long that we are able to watch the train as it weaves it’s way through the countryside. We go in and out of tunnels through some of the mountains and whenever we pass be homes people always come out and wave to the train as it passes.

In places there are 2 rail lines and as there is a huge avalanche risk in a lot of areas, there have been a lot of infrastructure built over the tracks to protect the trains.

The photo opportunities are endless. At the end of all of the Gold Class carriages there is an outdoor vestibule about 3 metres square, so you can enjoy the trip and the scenery from the outside with the wind in your face. Even the air out here smells clean!

We pass Hells Gate which is a huge bridge.

Another section we pass is called the Jaws of Death, the crew say it’s not nearly as bad as the mother in law! Fortunately I have a good one so their joke is wasted on me, as I said at the wedding, I have missed out on a lifetime of bad in law jokes! Haha!

We did pass through one really bland section, the trees were very sparse, the ground dry and quite barron - not what you see in the brochures, but it was only a few hours and at least it gave us a reason to stop snapping the camera!

When we arrived in Kamloops there was a heap of buses waiting for the train. Before we got off the train we were given our room keys and bus number, so all we had to do was get on the right bus and walk straight into our room, no taxi’s, no checking in. Even our luggage would already be in our room waiting for us. Our luggage didn’t even come on the train, it actually went in a truck ahead of us, because even though it took us all day to get here, it only took our luggage a few hours!

We spent the night in Kamloops, at the Thompson Hotel and Convention Centre, they even upgraded our room because of honeymoon, so that was a really nice surprise.

Kamloops is just a small town, we were told that the main industry is tourism and the train stopping in, only problem was we arrived around 6pm and the shops all closed before we arrived. But to be honest, even though we really hadn’t done anything all day, we were more than happy to find something easy to eat and just collapse for the night. There was an option to go to a dinner and show, but we even skipped that.

We end up getting a really classy Subway and McDonalds for dinner, take it back to our room and that’s pretty well that!

---