Where in the world is Sas?: Vancouver to Toronto by train pt 3

Waking up on the second day I looked out to vastly different scenery. I'd gone to sleep in the Rockies and work up in the plains. Still very beautiful though. By the second day I'd met quite a few people at the different meals so as they were walking back from the dining car or going through the cabin to the skycar people would stop in to chat so it was like a big family by the end. Very nice. Some of the interesting people I met - Met a British couple who had just spent 6 weeks touring Australia and they loved it and were slowly heading home. Met another British girl who had spent the last 2 years living in Sydney working in finance or something. She was really nice and around my age, had a couple of meals with her. The youngest two in First class were these two law students (who looked about 19 and didn't look like law students) heading toward Halifax, they were pretty funny. Also at that meal with the law students there was an older guy from Vancouver who gave me an awesome Vancouver pin and also caught up with me later to give me a magnetic photoframe of his favourite hockey team which we'd been talking about at the lunch. Another one of the young ones was Raif, a guy traveling home somewhere Montrealish but I really liked his name - Irish parents.

Met this fantastic woman and her hubby from Washington. A real ballsy lady full of fun. I'd kinda met her earlier when her and her hubby were passing through the cabin and were stopped by some other woman wanting to know where the crew director was because of a recent announcement about the scenery which according to the lady they had got it wrong so she was going to go up there to correct them. When the 'corrector' lady left Washington turned to me and said "who gives a shit really" which cracked me up. There was a really large man and his companion who shuffled through a couple times and I overheard him complaining to the crew director after the last breakfast because he was refused a refill of his cranberry juice - apparently the waitress had said that he had "had his fill" which spoiled his meal. There was a couple from Wasawgua who were really lovely, she was the brunette equivalent of a blonde and I mean that in the nicest way possible, she was really sweet. And of course my bunkee George who appointed himself as my official Canadian tour guide and kept me informed of the stuff coming up and history of the place. Before he worked as a logger he also worked on the railroad and had traveled this train a lot so he knew the ropes.

At the Jasper stop after I went for my walk we got our 3rd passenger for our cabin area. His name escapes me right now (I'll call him dood) but he was another retiree from the railroad. George had worked on the railroad as had his Dad and they swapped a bunch of names of people who had worked and this station or that and dood remembered George's dad from way back in the 50's. When George got off at Horne Payne dood got off as well to go and meet George's dad and have a reminisce. Funny how small the world is. Even funnier is that dood thought that George and I were a couple and that we didn't want to sit together at meals!! ACK because George was in his mid 50's or something. HELLO!

Bit of a highlight stopping at Saskatoon which is in Saskatchewan! That was awesome although the station was a bit cruddy cuz it's really out in the middle of nowhere, not much to see but I did get a pic of the station sign :)

I got to sleep on the bottom bunk on the last night as George left in the afternoon and it made such a big difference with the rocking. I actually slept pretty well that night thanks to Wendy, our new personal attendant. They swapped crews at the Winnipeg stop which was about 10:30pm the previous night. . Anyway...here's some plains pics. Click the pics to enlarge.

the plains

Saskatoon! in Saskatchewan! yay!

flock of birds on the plain

a hitchhiker!

George was telling me about the telephone poles in that back in the day the trains had to latch on to the poles to be able to communicate but these days its all done through the rails. There's miles and miles of unused poles and wires out there now. No one could be bothered collecting it all.

Here's the bunks all made up for sleeping. The sitting spot is off to the right. If we had of had anyone else in our cabin we wouldn't have been allowed to keep the bunks down as they usually put them up after breakie.