looking out the train window picture post
This is a picture post to go with my Toronto to Kamloops story. As usual, photos taken out of a moving vehicle aren't great. You get some reflections in the window, you only get half of what you wanted in frame because you zoomed by too quickly, and everything is stretched and blurred. But here are 12 pics that provide a snapshot of what a big chunk of Canada looks like.
I took this photo in the morning after being on the train for about 24 hours already. It's somewhere in northern Ontario, and it looks almost exactly the same as the previous 20 hours. Trees and bog and sunken powerlines.
Apparently there are over 250,000 lakes in Ontario, and most of them look like this. The water is so black it looks like poison. I don't think they drain anywhere, they're just snowmelt.
Seriously, the lakes just go on forever and ever. I never saw a single animal in northern Ontario, aside from clouds of insects. The Canadian Shield seems more desolate than any prairie.
Speaking of prairie, here we are entering Manitoba. Note the trees and general dampness.
Waking up a bit further west, it looked more like a traditional prairie - big sky, no trees.
Sided out in Saskatchewan.
Waking up in Alberta. We rolled into Edmonton around midnight, by the time i woke up we were in the Rockies.
Just because you're in the mountains, doesn't mean you get rid of the soggy, boggy wetlands. Canada is a very watery nation.
I think this photo was taken just after entering BC, and the river you see there is the very top end of the Fraser River, which ultimately pops out in Vancouver.
This is the railroad junction where the left turn heads south through Kamloops and into the Fraser Valley - the right turn heads out to Prince George and Prince Rupert - near the Alaskan coast.
I was overjoyed to see this river - the North Thompson river, one of the two Thompson rivers that join together in Kamloops. Kamloops is having a bad spring flood season this year due to snowmelt and rainfall in the Rockies... Some of the rapids along the Thompson were epic, with submerged logs and rocks creating huge eddies and backward-flowing surf.
I didn't get a picture of the last little stretch going into Kamloops where the trees disappear and are replaced by sagebrush steppe. But this picture shows the transition from logging country further north in BC to ranch country in the Kamloops area. The mountains become hills, and the steep river canyons become grassy floodplains. Just like i knew i was in Alberta when i started seeing cows on the prairie, i knew i was getting into "my" corner of BC when i saw horses in the clearings.
Right now the sky is blue and the sun is hot. The river is flooded and all of the beaches and riverside parks are underwater, but the dry, sage-flecked hills are still curving up in the distance. I'm sitting in a roadside motel, the only person spending this sunny day in my room. Everyone else just stopped off here overnight on the way up to Banff or Jasper or wherever. But for me this place is the best place in Canada. It's dusty and clear and warm and sunny. And unlike the similar landscape of the south Okanagan, it isn't crowded with tourists for whom it's a destination in itself.
Kamloops is the first town i ever moved to solely for the weather and the landscape, not for the job opportunities. After having traveled through a significant amount of Canada over the past year, i think i would still move back to it again for the same reason. It's sort a home for me, even though i don't have family, friends, work or pretty much anything else here. I have some connection to the land, i suppose.
I took this photo in the morning after being on the train for about 24 hours already. It's somewhere in northern Ontario, and it looks almost exactly the same as the previous 20 hours. Trees and bog and sunken powerlines.
Apparently there are over 250,000 lakes in Ontario, and most of them look like this. The water is so black it looks like poison. I don't think they drain anywhere, they're just snowmelt.
Seriously, the lakes just go on forever and ever. I never saw a single animal in northern Ontario, aside from clouds of insects. The Canadian Shield seems more desolate than any prairie.
Speaking of prairie, here we are entering Manitoba. Note the trees and general dampness.
Waking up a bit further west, it looked more like a traditional prairie - big sky, no trees.
Sided out in Saskatchewan.
Waking up in Alberta. We rolled into Edmonton around midnight, by the time i woke up we were in the Rockies.
Just because you're in the mountains, doesn't mean you get rid of the soggy, boggy wetlands. Canada is a very watery nation.
I think this photo was taken just after entering BC, and the river you see there is the very top end of the Fraser River, which ultimately pops out in Vancouver.
This is the railroad junction where the left turn heads south through Kamloops and into the Fraser Valley - the right turn heads out to Prince George and Prince Rupert - near the Alaskan coast.
I was overjoyed to see this river - the North Thompson river, one of the two Thompson rivers that join together in Kamloops. Kamloops is having a bad spring flood season this year due to snowmelt and rainfall in the Rockies... Some of the rapids along the Thompson were epic, with submerged logs and rocks creating huge eddies and backward-flowing surf.
I didn't get a picture of the last little stretch going into Kamloops where the trees disappear and are replaced by sagebrush steppe. But this picture shows the transition from logging country further north in BC to ranch country in the Kamloops area. The mountains become hills, and the steep river canyons become grassy floodplains. Just like i knew i was in Alberta when i started seeing cows on the prairie, i knew i was getting into "my" corner of BC when i saw horses in the clearings.
Right now the sky is blue and the sun is hot. The river is flooded and all of the beaches and riverside parks are underwater, but the dry, sage-flecked hills are still curving up in the distance. I'm sitting in a roadside motel, the only person spending this sunny day in my room. Everyone else just stopped off here overnight on the way up to Banff or Jasper or wherever. But for me this place is the best place in Canada. It's dusty and clear and warm and sunny. And unlike the similar landscape of the south Okanagan, it isn't crowded with tourists for whom it's a destination in itself.
Kamloops is the first town i ever moved to solely for the weather and the landscape, not for the job opportunities. After having traveled through a significant amount of Canada over the past year, i think i would still move back to it again for the same reason. It's sort a home for me, even though i don't have family, friends, work or pretty much anything else here. I have some connection to the land, i suppose.