Kate arrived home yesterday from Winnipeg - by train! She has been wanting to make the trip by train for awhile now and this seemed like a good time. She took some photos along the way, although she said it was difficult to get ones that weren't blurry because of the jiggling of the train.
The Via rail train started out in Winnipeg at 11:30 Sunday evening and arrived in Toronto at just past 9:00 on Tuesday morning - that's 36 hours on the train and she loved it!
We looked up the route and the train goes quite far north and through very remote areas of Ontario. You can see the red line on the map below where she travelled. Kate told me that at one point a group of people arrived at the train station on snowmobiles and got on the train to go to the next station. A lot of aboriginal people live in the area the train travels through and many of their communities are too remote to have road access so they travel by train, airplane, snowmobiles in the winter, and boats in the summer depending on where they live.
Kate said it was a winter wonderland all the way from Winnipeg across Ontario until she got near Toronto and then there was rain - yuck! Look at how gorgeous the scenery is -
There were beautiful views along the train of snowy forests,
animal tracks on frozen lakes (she even saw a red fox walking across a lake at one point),
cabins on an island,
and watery winter sunshine.
The train itself was an adventure too. Kate loved the panoramic views out of the dome car's curved windows and spent a lot of time there soaking up the scenery.
The dining car had beautiful etched glass dividers with different Canadian birds on them, pretty tablecloths and of course great views.
All the meals were great, but Kate's favourite was breakfast with porridge, toast, yogurt, juice, and coffee - oh, and cute little pots of jam!
One last action shot.
What an adventure! It certainly was an epic way to get home.
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