The Hudson Bay -- there, back, and in between

First off, let me wish a belated Happy Anniversary to my parents, on this day of this post! :) Here's a pic to make you happy:
Sun, Aug 6 --Back in Winnipeg we headed to the Forks Market, which unfortunately was soon closing. We were able to get our food for the way up to Churchill, and even a bottle of wine! Too bad the hot dog stand was closing, we wanted to get supper there! Instead we ate at Earl's right next to the station. We then returned to the station, called our respective parents, and waited for the train.

We boarded at 8:30pm and departed at 8:45pm in a fairly empty car. We rolled into Portage La Prairie on the same tracks we'll be taking on the Canadian on Friday, through more large crop fields. At 10:30, it was time to sleep, but unfortunately we had no pillow or blanket, so i asked for them, but none were to be had on this train! egad! Luckily it wasn't that cold like on the Ocean, but still! We made due with our sweaters, and though i woke up a few times, had my best trainsleep (so far).

Mon, Aug 7-- We woke up to sun and foggy crop fields. In one field I saw about 25 deer, our first major animal sighting. Turns out we were still in Saskatchewan when we woke up, soon to go through Hudson Bay, SK. We reached The Pas, MB, pronounced "the paw", at 10:45am, where we added a coach car, another locamotive, and some passengers. Still the train wasn't that full, and Matt and I had 2 four-seaters to ourselves. The scenery turns marshy, called muskeg, a bit further up the tracks. There appears to be lots of alder, birch, aspen, some sort of purple wispy flower, black spruce, and cattails. We ate lunch of rotis bought at the market in the dining car whilst watching When We Were Kings. Later in the day we passed a beautiful Cormorant Lake, though I am not sure where the name came from, since none of those birds should be around. At night we ate sandwiches for supper, and took a detour up to Thompson, where we would pick up lots of people to fill up our car. We were running pretty behind schedule by now, and it seemed that the whole way from The Pas we were just creeping along at a snail's pace.

Tues, Aug 8-- We woke up earlyish, and were supposed to arrive in Churchill at 8am, to no avail. We were now about 4 hours behind schedule as we creeped along sometimes stopping at remote locations. Having not prepared for a breakfast, we ate on the train, blueberry pancakes and bacon, pretty good. We finally arrive in Churchill at about 12:15pm. We arranged our luggage and then asked about where to go to swim and see whales, and what the risk of polar bear sighting was. The Parks Canada guy was, surprisingly, very wishy washy, and not very assuring about places we could and couldn't go to keep out of polar bear harm. Alas. We set off towards the town complex, as there is supposed to be a beach behind it, whilst walking around, we ran into this: We continued on, going towards the beach, and spotted lots of white things out in Hudson Bay, they were beluga whales! Tons of them! Despite Matt's hemming and hawing and concern that I would get hypothermia, I did go swimming in Hudson Bay. I got out to my waist and splashed around a bit, then promptly got out. The water was really nice on our feet, didn't seem as cold as the Atlantic, but once your whole body was in it was pretty cold. You might just barely be able to see a white speck to the right of my head, that's a whale. We stood in the water watching them for awhile, some eventually came probably 150m away and would stick their heads out! Then we headed over to the Eskimo museum, where there were lots of carvings done by native peoples, mostly from further north in the Northwest Territories and Nunavut. There were also some stuffed polar bears and walruses, so I guess we did get to see some bears in Churchill. Our train back to Winnipeg turned out to leave late, scheduled for 10pm instead of 8ish, so we hung out at the Parks Canada building (which coupled as the train station) and watched a couple of films on Churchill and the wildlife.

On the train back we had upgraded to sleeping class, getting a double berth, and how luxurious compared to coach! We got to board first and get settled in, then once the train got moving, we could take showers! and boy was that nice, having not showered since Saturday in Toronto. It's interesting trying to shower on the train, luckily there is a hand rail in case the ride gets wobbly. It was so nice having a flat bed to lie on too! Unfortunately our meals weren't provided like i had thought, so we had bought food in Churchill (talk about expensive!).

Wed, Aug 9 -- Again the train was running very slowly, apparently it is because of the tracks up in the muskeg. In the summer months, they are worried about them heating up and settling, and the train has a high risk of derailing, so they have to take it very slow during the day, they can go a little faster at night. We got into Thompson in the early afternoon, probably running at least 5 hours late at this point. We go on the same tracks that we went up on, so it's the same scenery, just backwards, and sometimes we saw different sections of the trail that we were passing through at night going up. We passed the time by reading, watching movies, crosswording, eating, etc. At one point we stopped in the middle of nowhere due to some traffic communication, allowing us to get even further behind schedule.

Thurs, Aug 10-- So we woke up this morning, and were somewhere around Saskatchewan, meaning we were about 8 hours behind... eek! We ate our breakfast, showered, and got told by the attendant that since we were so late, we were going to be getting a complementary lunch at noon! how great! And what a large lunch it was. We sat with two older women from Winnipeg and Calgary. Did I mention we were the youngest in sleeping class by about 25 yrs atleast? Anyways, we finally ended up rolling into Winnipeg at about 5pm, 9 hours behind schedule. Apparently this qualifies us for some sort of discount. We shall see. We walked over to our hotel across the Assiniboine and Red rivers. We had to set out to find a laundromat after going for 11 days, which was no problem, and had a gourmet dinner of Little Caesars and Catfish beer.

Fri, Aug 11 -- We have spent the morning here changing our rental car for Edmonton... that was fun. And we've dropped our stuff off at the station, and are just walking about Winnipeg. It's a nice little city, a bit empty til you get downtown. Matt's bugging me to wrap up here at Second Cup, so that is all! We're off to Edmonton tonight.