Along the Thompson River
Ponderosa Pines
Cliffs along the river - "River Terraces"
Again, we had to get up way too early to catch the bus to catch the train. And again, the train was late getting started.
They told us not to bother bringing our bags down from the hotel room. We could just walk out and leave our bags in the room, and they would be collected, and would be waiting for us in Vancouver. For the record, they were... still, walking out and leaving my worldly goods behind made me somewhat nervous...
We pulled out of Kamloops, heading west along the shores of Kamloops Lake and the Thompson River (w) .
Along the Thompson River
Ponderosa Pines
Cliffs along the river - "River Terraces"
As you can see, we weren't as high up, and there wasn't as much snow. But we soon started climbing again, up into the Cascade Range, the last range of mountains before the coast. We went through Black Rock Canyon:
Black Rock Canyon
...so named, of course, because of the color (excuse me, colour - this is Canada, after all) of the rocks. They don't look too black in the picture, because of the flash. But they were black - trust me.
After Black Rock Canyon, we went through Thompson Canyon:
Thompson Canyon
Now, along the way, there had been several occasions where we passed a train - always a freight train, of course - going the other way. But at one point on today's run, I was surprised to see several train cars lying on their sides, off to the side of the tracks. Either Claude or Randy remarked that the engineers must have been playing "chicken."
At one point, we saw an interesting rock formation in the river:
The Frog
At the town of Lytton, we came to the point where the Thompson River meets the Fraser River (w) :
Thompson meets Fraser
As either Randy or Claude pointed out, you can clearly see the difference in water color between the two rivers. The Fraser is known as "The Mighty Fraser," or sometimes "The Muddy Fraser." Unlike the Columbia River, it has no dams, and so it's a major highway for salmon. We followed the Fraser River for the rest of the day, all the way to Vancouver. Our route took us through Fraser Canyon (w) :
Fraser Canyon
...and Hell's Gate (w) , the narrowest part of the canyon - of which, alas, I have no pictures. We also passed a large rock in the middle of the river, called Saddle Rock, where a log perched high up on the rock shows the high water line:
Saddle Rock
And I'll throw in these pictures here, because they didn't fit anywhere else... a picture of the Trans-Canada Highway, and another railway line, across the river from our train line:
Roads across the river
...and two pictures of mist covered mountains:
Misty Mountains
We came out of the canyon at the town of Hope. At this point, we were out of the mountains, the Trans-Canada Highway became a freeway, night was falling, and Claude informed us that we were now "officially beyond Hope." We still had a couple of hours to go, but the adventure was winding down. We rolled through one small town after another in the dark. There was no more snow. Eventually, we came into the trainyards on the outskirts of Vancouver. Miles and miles of train tracks and parked trains. And finally, about 6:30, we pulled into the Vancouver train terminal.
We found a cab, and drove out to the Vancouver Airport to pick up a rental car. On the way, we quizzed the cab driver about local restaurants, and got some recommendations. We got our car, drove back into town, and had dinner at a steak house called The Keg, that the cabbie had recommended. We ate thick slabs of beef with steak knives so big they would probably be illegal to carry on the street. We then went to our hotel, checked in, and went to bed.
Once again, here's a map of our route:
