Onward to Kamloops!

Sorry!  Arriving home put this saga to the back burner for a while ... and has given me a chance to begin to edit the photos ... I'll go back and tweak some of the early ones later, but for now, let's go onward, aboard the Rocky Mountaineer train, headed to Kamloops!

So, after the rainbow clouds, our next adventure was going through the Spiral Tunnels that we had seen from the road.  I thought I had taken a photograph, but I can't find one ... just lots of trees, so I think that it was a point and shoot opportunity where the train moved faster than I did, and I wound up with the trees instead of the tunnel.  

And although there are two halves to this tunnel, our train was not long enough for us to have the excitement of seeing part of the train travelling through one part while we headed toward the other.  Nonetheless, we DID have the opportunity to travel through Rogers Pass on the only passenger train that still travels this route.

But even though there aren't pictures of the Spiral Tunnel(s) I did love the scenery from the train:

 Lovely to be able to look out and down and enjoy clear, unobstructed views!

 For a moment it felt as though we were back in northern Ontario!  But the reality is that they cut through rock to lay the rails, and so often we were up close and personal with the rocks as we travelled on our way!

 Train window reflections make for interesting photos!

Can you see the salmon?  One of the highlights of our trip was  seeing spawning salmon.

We followed the South Thompson River with  its pretty characteristic colour.  It's interesting how we began to take the picturesque and photogenic colour for granted because that's basically all we had seen since we arrived in the Rockies.

 Trestle bridges -- those we crossed and those for other modes of transportation -- rivers and mountains, rock slides, there were always lots of choices and even though we weren't going particularly fast, especially when we encountered freight trains and waited our turn on the sidings -- those siding moments were the best ones for camera focus, but NOT usually the greatest sources of pictures!


We were moving away from the Rocky Mountains, into the Columbia Mountains, heading toward the semi-arid, desert-like conditions of Kamloops.  

As we approached Kamloops, we passed a small cemetery.  We were told that it was an old cemetery for First Nations burials.  We were also told that this cemetery was forced upon the people whose tradition and culture demanded that the remains of the deceased be taken to the mountains.  Forced to bury their dead according to practices that were not their own, they complied, only to return in the dark of night to remove the remains, and take them to the mountain so that their spirits could rest.  The cemetery, complete with markers, remains, but we were told that there were few, if any bodies interred there.

 
Now, we were on the outskirts of Kamloops. 

As we approached we saw the Hoodoos.  These were different from those in Alberta, but strangely moving.

Welcome to Kamloops!

But Rocky Mountaineer had one more surprise for us.  They had checked us into the hotel prior to our arrival, and our luggage, which travelled by truck, had arrived before us, and was waiting for us in our rooms.  It was a very thoughtful ending to our day!