We very much enjoyed the journey through The Rockies - the Dome Car was a great viewpoint but the views from our seats were good too. We passed Mount Robson the highest peak in The Rockies at just under 13,000ft and the amazingly blue waters of Moose Lake, the deepest lake at 700ft deep. Photographing these sights was a challenge - although the train slows down to pass points of interest there is still the problem of avoiding reflections in the glass, issues of what the camera focuses on - the foreground or background, and foreground vegetation blocking the view the moment at which you press the shutter. However, we have a few photos that are not too bad that we will post. In our carriage we were pretty much surrounded by three generations of an American family. We were so impressed with the two young boys who kept themselves entertained the whole trip. What was fascinating was the feeding habits of this wildlife! Immediately after substantial breakfasts the Grandmother ushered the boys over to her snack bag - a shopping bag full of Oreos and other chocolate goodies. The boys were being actively encouraged into systematic over-eating by their over-weight family - sad.

Our arrival into Jasper had a level of drama. First of all it was announced that the train would arrive in Jasper an hour early - great we thought, we won't be late for dinner at The Rocky Mountain Escape. Then we sat outside Jasper for about 30 minutes, eventually pulling into the station where the doors were not released. So near and yet so far - vague announcements suggested 'an incident'. Dave was fascinated by the length of goods trains so to pass the time counted one that trundled through Jasper station pulled by three diesels - 176 wagons and most of these had two layers of containers.

After about an hour the doors on our end of the train (the cheap seats) were released and our bags were unloaded. The rest of the train passengers were still captive. Passengers waiting to board had been told more and we learnt from them that a passenger in the cabin section of the train had reported a loss of jewellery. It seemed that the Royal Canadian Mounted Police were searching every item of baggage before passengers could be let off the train. This would have been an amazingly huge task and ignored the fact that it wasn't impossible that the jewels left the train at the stop in Kamloops, or had been passed to a passenger on our end of the train. We don't know how this story ended as we made good our escape, picking up our hire car and getting on the road to The Rocky Mountain Escape. We will have a look to see if we can find any local news about the 'great train robbery'.

The 120km journey went well - even though the final 30km was on unmade roads/logging tracks which slowed us down. The last stretch took us and the hire car through some rather deep puddles but we made it eventually. We were though now late for dinner, fortunately we had an arrangement to phone ahead with our arrival time so that dinner could be delayed for us. We were greeted by Leo and Molly the two large but friendly resident dogs. Thankfully for Jill the dogs were exceptionally well-behaved. We quickly unloaded at our ever so solid log cabin which was constructed of the thickest logs you've ever seen. The cabin was comfortable with a log burning stove and water supplied from a sulphur well. We enjoyed our own sulphur bath after dinner and settled to bed in what was starting to be a log cabin heated to sauna temperatures. We'll try to manage the stove better another evening.