One thing I will say about the Rocky Mountaineer journey is don`t get too excited about Kamloops. It is a relatively small town in British Columbia where the North and South Thomson rivers meet, there are ski resorts close by and lots of wildlife but on the train journey you will only get around 12 hours there. Time to have a meal, there are several good restaurants in the town, and get a good nights sleep as next morning the pick up from the hotel is around 6am.
We stayed at the Sandman Signature which is very close to the railway station and a good quality hotel with lovely staff. The short coach ride took us back to the train to continue our journey up to Banff and Lake Louise. Breakfast was served shortly after leaving Kamloops and was equally as good as the day before, I went for the sweet pancake & blueberry option – naught but very nice!
The further towards Banff we travelled the more spectacular the scenery became, past the unique clay and rock formations called the Hoodoos, formed after the last ice age. The mouth of the Adams river home to the world`s largest salmon run , on we travelled with the snow capped mountains becoming more evident the further we travelled.
We were on the second lunch sitting today and, just in case we were hungry, the Rocky staff came round with cheese and wine as a pre lunch snack whilst we waited. I chose the salmon today with was really good. Then it was back up to our domed carriage to enjoy the journey and hope to see wild life and bears in particular. Sure enough, about an hour before we got to Lake Louise the cry came ” Grizzly to the left” and there he was a real, live grizzly bear in its natural environment! Amazing but he passed in a flash – too quickly to take a picture, but he was real !
Finally our journey on the wonderful Rocky Mountaineer ended in Lake Louise.This was not in our itinerary but, as we were all so keen to see this beautiful lake with the world famous Chateau Lake Louise on its shores, we waived good bye to our train and the last part of our journey to Banff was by road. The lake was still frozen and absolutely beautiful as is the hotel
The stop was well worth it. This is a stunningly beautiful place, probably better known as a ski resort and in fact the ski season was due to finish the weekend after our visit. Mother nature however played her hand and the ski slope had to close early because a grizzly bear and her cubs were on the ski slope and could not be moved! what a lovely story to end our train journey, but there is much more to this part of the world to see still!
