The Journey to Jasper

It's a pretty long way from Vancouver to Jasper. The train journey took almost as long as the flight to Canada in the first place! And if you look at a map, you can see why.

And here's the UK at the same scale, for comparison. It's about the same distance as Land's End to Newcastle-Upon-Tyne, though through somewhat tougher terrain.

And what terrain it is! Admittedly there did seem to be an inverse relationship between the beauty of the scenery and the quantity of sunlight, which was a bit of a shame, but anyway.

So, as you will see, the scenery immediately outside Vancouver isn't terribly...uh...scenic. Inspiring in a bleak-ish sort of way, but not what most people would call beautiful. 

Fortunately, it improves very quickly

Yes, that is a frozen waterfall in the background

And at about the same rate as the scenery improved, the temperature dropped. Which, in places such as the rather impressive frozen waterfall above, also somewhat enhanced the beauty of the area.

This spot is referred to as the Mouth of Hell, if I remember correctly, and is somewhere on the Thompson River. I've tried to look it up and confirm it, but there seems to a surprising shortage of information on the area, at least to that level of detail. A shame, really, as if I had realised I would have taken better notes. I shall be sure to do something about that if I return the same way.

After that picture along the train, the light faded too much for me to get decent pictures,

Kamloops is an... uh... interesting looking place. I'm sure that the rest of it looks better in daylight.

Jasper train station is surprisingly impressive and was a very welcoming sort of place to arrive.

Seeing as this is a rather sparse post, being mostly pictures, this seems like a good time to digress on to a more personal note for a little while.
Settling in is taking a little while, what with adjusting to having a more or less normal job for the first time, a poorly timed cold (hardly surprising) and so on. But I keep coming across things that make me feel very at home here. Just little things, and things that are quite different from back home, really. But they are things that make me feel like this is the right sort of place for me, and that once I have settled in a bit more I will very much enjoy my time in Canada.
Little things like these:

It's a bit hard to read, but it's vanilla and oak flavour. And very nice indeed.

Kombucha, in particular, seems to be everywhere. Well, in Jasper, anyway (along with a very nice yoga studio, which I may cover some other time). But the Canadian reputation for gentle friendliness seems to be extremely well founded. As well as a seemingly less widely spread reputation for low-level oddness, which is making me feel really rather comfortable here. It would seem that a quest to explore the eccentricities of Canada was a rather good idea.

Quite a stroke of luck that, really.