I apologize for the late post. I was supposed to get back to my apartment by 4 pm on Saturday, but I didn’t end up back until around 9:30 PM. This involves delayed flights and someone’s uncle Hector, but you will need to wait to hear about that story.

In any case, what that meant is that everything I was supposed to do in 1.5 days, I attempted to do yesterday despite being tired and not going to bed on time. All of those things did not happen.

Also, I had planned to do one blog post for January 18 and 19 for the train, but when I started doing all the pictures and looking at notes, I realized there would be no time to do it all together and that post would be too long to finish before work today, so I decided to split it up.

I also apologize for people just starting the post. The earlier posts don’t include pictures because I had filled my “free” quota. To add more pictures, I had to delete earlier pictures from my file. I didn’t realize until today that this meant that the pictures were also deleted from the posts!! UGH!

This weekend, I will work to replace the pictures. I’ll just have to pay to keep them there. Sigh. SO much for “free” space.

But I will focus on the last days of the trip and not think about the work I have put on myself to keep the blog looking like I want it to look. Maybe the upgrade I will have to purchase to keep the pictures up will also allow me to post video!

In any case, let us move back to the prairies.

It’s appropriate to just focus on the prairie provinces of Saskatchewan and Manitoba anyway.

I remember in one of the spots where I actually had some cellular service, I sent some pictures to someone, and they said the prairies looked pretty desolate. It’s funny because they never seemed that way to me. I thought it was beautiful and expansive. I felt like I could breath deeply in the way I haven’t felt since the last time I was in Kansas. I do love mountains, but I love being able to see so far into the distance. I love seeing large swaths of land all at once. I miss it.

And the wind. There is nothing like the wind on the prairies. Maybe at sea. I’ve never been on the open ocean, so I don’t know.

Getting up to keep my goal of always being the first to the shower at 6 am found me in Saskatchewan with a brief stop in Saskatoon. It’s an interesting thing to stop and start train while in the shower. You have to use some motor skills!

Breakfast was in Saskatoon or shortly thereafter. I forgot to take a picture of the menu, but I chose the cranberry-range pancakes (middle picture). They give you a whole pot of pure maple syrup, too. Love being in Canada where maple syrup flows like water.

I had breakfast with a man named Doug who has ridden this particular route 71 times! He rode it on its first run as a boy with his family and rode it quite a bit depending on where his father, a Canadian army officer, was stationed. He has taken trains all over Canada, the west coast of the US, Denver to Kentucy, Montreal to NYC (which he was sad that is not longer in service because he thinks it was lovely), Australia, Thailand, and Vietnam. His favorite train trip was in Cuba.

He’s retired army himself. He wanted to be an officer but was injured, so he went on to become a medical reseacher in the Canadian army specializing in spinal injuries. I so wanted to ask him about my back problems, but I kept it to the train conversations because he knew so much. I spent the rest of my time trying to get him to write a book. I even volunteered to edit it for free. He just sighed, shook his head, and said other people had more interesting lives and knew more.

I was going to go up to the dome car after breakfast, but it was still pretty dark out, so I went back to my cabin where . . . I promptly feel asleep. It’s my general response to pancakes.

When I woke up, there was just sparkling snowy prairie.

I especially like seeing the cows. I’ve always liked cows.

There was a moment when I thought, I should go to the dome car. But I was feeling so cozy in my bed that I just stayed there.

Basically, life on the train is alternating between looking outside, taking pictures, and reading or writing in journal. And people can’t get in contact with you, so you feel cocooned in cozy, silent comfort.

Except, ironically, I did get a text outside of a town once. My notification from the City of Worcester to tell me that my garbage pick up was not going to be delayed this week still somehow got through.

At lunch, I ate with the university student again and the person I will refer to as concrete guy because he works in the concrete business. He has four cats and was a bit concerned about them while he was gone. He was very excited about the baby sequoia tree that he just purchased. He showed us pictures. I do admit it was cute, but I’m not sure why he felt he needed to bring up the fact that it’s okay not to want to be married several times. Who in his family is pressuring him? He was probably my age if not a little bit older. They should have given up by now.

Both me and the uni guy, who looked distinctly uncomfortable, assured him that he was living a great life and not hurting anyone, so why feel presure?

I was so busy looking at his pictures that I forgot to take a picture of my lunch before I had finished most of it which is too bad because the salad was so pretty.

Also, I was on the wrong side of the car to get a picture of the bison herd, too! Probably the only regret of the trip.

We passed through so many farming communities that I wish I had a more detailed map of the train to be able to label all the pictures and all the communities. Some I was able to find out because of signs on buildings, but there are many that I only know because my phone identified them when I took pictures. However, there were lots of places without any cell service, so I don’t know anything about what they are called.

I got plenty of pictures of Semans because it is a bigger town.

I also learned to pay attention to the train whistle/horn because not only did it mean that we were going to be going through a railway crossing, but since there was a crossing, we might be close to a town, which meant–sometimes–there would be some service for a bit so I could check weather and location.

The above sequence of pictures was taken approaching Semans, but I have several like this where we are approaching equally lonely highways.

Not all crossings were this out-of-the-way. We were actually close to some of the houses when we passed through Punnichy, for example.

A little bit after lunch, we came to the town of Melville, which was a stop where we could get off to stretch our legs. For stops like this, we generally only get about 15 minutes. There isn’t usually much to do close to the station anyway, but it’s nice to get out. The station building was actually closed. It looks like they are doing a major renovation.

They have other stops like this during the wee hours, but they generally only open the economy class cars, which is fair. The people in those cars are in regular seats, which do recline a bit, but still they don’t have the same opportunity for movement as we have.

I also always take an opportunity to take pictures of the train from the outside if I can. This time, I made sure to get a picture of one of the dome cars from the outside, too. See picture in the middle.

Leaving Melville.

What I also learned here was that I had not removed the “Do not Disturb” sign from my door. I actually hadn’t paid much attention to the sign other than noticing the print was in a different color tham the ones in the car in front of this one. It’s what helps me remember my room versus the A cabin in the other car.

I was asked by the steward when I wanted her to “put up my bed” since I hadn’t removed it. I apologized thinking I had broken some rule because I remembered that for safety issues some of the berths had to be put up at a certain time. She told me it wasn’t a problem and that . . . I COULD HAVE MY BED DOWN THE ENTIRE TIME!!

Gasp. Really? I can sit in bed for three days watching the view out of the train. Did someone create this fantasy from my mind?

Of course, I left this sign up. I can make my own bed. So I spent the entire train ride–Wednesday through Friday morning–in bed. What a dream.

One of the prettiest places we went through that afternoon was the Spy Hill/Ellice-Archie Communities which is between the Assinboine river and the Qu-Appelle River valleys.

At dinner, I sat with a couple who was visiting family at our next stop, Portage la Prairie.

When they found out what I did for a living, the woman opened up about the struggles that her grandson had had making it through university because of the strife between his divorced parents and how his father didn’t want him going to university and gave him bad information that his mother (her daughter) had to correct. We had interesting conversation about the difficulty students (and their families) have navigating university systems. She actually thanked me for my work, but is one of the first people outside of academia not related to me to say up front that she thought my work must be exhausting.

I was surprised. I mean, I know that, but I was really surprised when she wondered how long could my work be fulfilling when systems seem to be in place to make it harder to help students.

It made me think about higher education for regular people, which is what we do at regional publics and how our mission is to expand educational opportunities for everyone at the same time that the world seems to increasingly want education to only be for certain people. This seems to be an underlying feeling in Canada, too. At least from my talks with people on the train.

Dessert was a champagne cake with frozen raspberry mousse on top. The soup of the day was onion soup. Notice how I talked about dessert first.

The stop at Portage la Prairie was really fast. I wonder if they always stop there or only stop if they have people to get off.

Instead, everyone seemed eager to get to Winnipeg, the only substantial stop on the trip before Toronto. We stayed there for a while because the crew changes there.

We didn’t get there until 9:15, but I was determined to stay awake to be able to see some of it.

The train station is really pretty. I wish we stopped during the day because, apparently, there is a good train museum in it, but that was closed. They still had some interesting, historical displays that were in the general area for people to see.

I initally was only going to step outside briefly, but when I realized that we weren’t going to be boarding again until 11 and one of the couples from the train talked about seeing The Forks, I decided to explore a little more.

I admit, I did no research on Winnipeg because I didn’t know we were going to be staying there that long. I could have checked the VIArail schedule, but I didn’t. So, the only thing I knew about Winnipeg was that the Winnipeg Jets, an NHL hockey team, is from here.

I had to go see what that pretty building was that I could see from outside the train station. It turned out to be the historical Fort Garry hotel.

You also get a better view of the front of the station from farther away. The city was built up around the station, so there are really good views of it from all angles.

I feel sorry to Winnipeg because even though I had just been utilizing information from the Canadian Museum of Human Rights webpage just a month ago for materials for Leadership MetroWest anti-racism training, I didn’t even realize the museum was in Winnipeg.

And to add insult to injury, it’s right around the corner from the train station and the major building you see entering Winnipeg from the train.

I stumbled upon it on my way to The Forks. I had never heard of it (remember my lack of Winnipeg research), but I saw signs, and the couple had talked about it being a place where two rivers meet, so I decided, why not? I couldn’t get back on the train for another 90 minutes anyway. Let’s take a looksee.

I walked around the block to behind the station and found The Forks area which has the museum and the bridge and the park.

I wish I had taken a better picture of the museum. It looked good when I checked, but I realize now that my glasses were probably a bit foggy.

From the bridge, you can actually see a straight shot to the back of the train station, so it never felt far either. Since it was dark and late, I didn’t wander too off the path to look more at the park. If it had been earlier or if I hadn’t been alone, I would have wandered about more in the park or looked to see more on what was on the other side of the bridge.

I was also worried that the back entrance of the station might be closed since often places restrict entrances/exits after certain times of day. That would mean I would have to walk back the way I came–all the way round back to the front.

I shouldn’t have been worried. The back door was open. I had plenty of time. In any case, I just went back into the station anyway. I was a bit tired (it was past my bedtime), so I stayed in the station and read until we were called to board.

When we did, I immediately got into my pajamas, brushed my teeth, and went to bed. I love sleeping on the train. It’s like being rocked to sleep.