Today we got to sleep in until 6:30am, we didn't know what to do with ourselves. We arrived back to our rail car and were delighted to find that we were the last car on the train again, which is so very rare.

We donned our Harry Gates shirts today and had many queries about "who IS Harry Gates???"  If we told you, we’d have to kill you .

Travis, Pete and Caitlin were the best. Even though it was their last trip of the season, they treated us as if we were visiting royalty. Any request was met with a smile and sincere desire to help. The meal menus were the same as the first leg but with so many choices, no meal felt repetitive. There were some passengers on the trip that started drinking single malt scotch at 10am… it made me feel better when I ordered some red wine later on. Io bevuto tante vino rosso.

I was initially concerned that we were duplicating our route from Kamloops to Vancouver. Turns out we had no reason for concern. The rail tracks going East travel on the Canadian Pacific railroad, which was finished first and had the best terrain for building. The Canadian National rail was built 30 years later when the moratorium on competition ended. They had to build on the opposite side of the rivers in a much more severe terrain. Blessedly, the technology had advanced farther ahead during those 30 years.

Only in the last 20 years, the two rail lines (who are serious competitors) decided to cooperate and agreed to use the Canadian Pacific for eastern travel and Canadian National for westerly travel. Sooooo- we experienced an entirely different perspective and vistas than we did heading east.

Some facts we didn’t know… .

- Moose can travel under water up to 20 feet deep to eat the vegetation on the bottom of the river/lakes.

- Ospreys use the same nest year after year and pass it down for generations. We don’t know which little Osprey gets the nest in each generation.

- Ospreys line their nests with thorns when it’s time for the babies to leave the nest.

- Eagles are bullies. They apparently are vicious have been known to steal and eat the osprey young.

We continued to witness a passenger who talked ad nauseum to everyone only about himself. No one, especially his wife, ever got a work in edgewise. Tim made up a song about Ian I McMe I.   The lyrics go something like this… “Me, Me, Me, Me, I wanna talk about me. I don’t care a thing about you, I wanna talk about me”  Then the call out- “when I say “I” you say “me”. You get the drift.

We arrived back to Vancouver and were dropped off back to the Fairmont Waterfront hotel and decided to just eat here. Ted and Katie AKA Skippy and Harry have to leave at dawn so we said our farewells tonight. We had such an amazing time and look forward to more adventures in the future.