The Heavenly Rocky Mountaineer – Canada Day 15

Day 15. Rocky Mountaineer Kamloops – Banff. 2nd May 2015

Oh it is tough – this travelling business. A need to be up and ready to board the train by 6.15am! Never a preferred time of the morning for either of us. Oh but wait – we  get up to be taken to a delicious day of meals, comfort AND astounding scenery. We can do that.

With a reminder of what was ahead of us we found our bus complete with Jack, another comedian bus driver. A bit early in the morning.

Onboard we are greeted warmly with the red carpet, and smiling faces of our crew. Snuggled into our seats we are away. Breakfast soon after and so began another day of gobbling up scenery, service and food!!!

And another day of beautiful sights flying past our window. Today more of the scenery one sees on the promos. Fir trees, rivers, and snow covered mountains of varied rock shapes.

 

Passed through a rail spiral – two in one – a spiral into a figure of 8. A feat of construction and problem solving.

Even the explanation is mindboggling:

“An eastbound train leaving Field climbs a moderate hill, goes through two short, straight tunnels on Mt. Stephen, under the Trans-Canada Highway, across the Kicking Horse River and into the Lower Spiral Tunnel in Mt. Ogden. It spirals to the left up inside the mountain for 891-m and emerges 15-m higher. The train then crosses back over the Kicking Horse River, under the highway a second time and into the 991-m tunnel in Cathedral Mountain. The train spirals to the right, emerging 17-m higher and continues to the top of Kicking Horse Pass”.   

 

Finally our time on the Rocky Mountaineer was over. it was hard to leave after such a well organised journey, such superb attention and  through scenery that took your breath away.

 

Arrived in Banff. What a shock – having to pick up our own bags!

We set off to find our B&B. Streets are named after wildlife and we needed to find Otter – a few wrong turns which saw us in Bear, Wolf and finally the Elk we needed, which lead (just as things began to get a teency tetchy!!) to Otter.

Robyn greeted us warmly and showed us round the heritage lodge along with recommendations for dinner. We immediately booked another night at the Rocky Mountain Lodge

Settled in our room, downstairs in the heritage quirky but comfortable lodge. Next in our hierachy of needs: dinner. This included a quick exploration of Banff – cute,chocolate boxey and hard to imagine it so full of tourists they have to close the town!

Our hunting and gathering lead us to Nourish Our service provided by a young Australian man which seemed unique at the time but we were soon to discover most of the region’s workforce is young travellers from elsewhere.

Nourish was a delicious vegetarian place and oh the delight – curry the night’s special!