Page 35 of The Trip of a Lifetime

‘Right,’ Martha said, heaving her backpack onto her shoulders. ‘Here we go again. Let’s get moving before Priya and Tara catch us up. I want these precious twenty minutes to count.’

‘Bus stop?’

‘Absolutely,’ Martha said. ‘I’m thinking we will probably have to head back to Calgary and then we can find out the best route after that.’

Within twenty minutes they were on the bus with Noah and as they pulled away from the hotel, Priya and Tara were just walking out with their backpacks.

‘Next bus isn’t for another forty minutes,’ Martha said. ‘We can keep our lead for a little longer.’

Erin was taking a closer look at the map.

‘Martha, look at this,’ she said, pushing the map onto her grandmother’s lap. ‘You can trace the road all the way across the province of Saskatchewan and into Manitoba, but there is no road that goes all the way to Churchill.’

‘No road at all? There must be something, surely. Oh, look, there’s a train line,’ Martha said, her finger following the track. ‘We’ll have to get on that, once we know where we need to pick it up. There looks to be a whole load of country before we get there and absolutely no mountains.’

‘I’m going to talk to the driver,’ Erin said and when they were stopped at a red traffic light, she made her way down to the front of the bus and settled in a seat.

‘Can I ask you a question?’ she said to the driver. Her name badge said ‘Annie’.

‘Sure, ask away,’ Annie said.

‘We’re trying to get to Churchill and I can see there’s a train line but no road on the map. Is that right, do you know?’

‘Yeah, there’s no road up to Churchill. You can get the train. It goes from Winnipeg all the way to Churchill and there’s a few stops where you can pick it up en route. Maybe Canora or The Pas. A lot of folks go up to Thompson. Depends on what you want to do. It’s a sleeper but I think it only goes a couple or maybe three times a week. I don’t know when the next one would be. You can look it up, though. Quicker to fly, you know.’

‘Thanks so much,’ Erin said and made her way back to Martha.

Martha was studying the map now and she had the information booklet open as well.

‘There are polar bears up there,’ she said. ‘I hope we get to see some.’

‘We can get a train but the driver said she thinks it only runs a few times a week. She mentioned Canora and The Pas, and also Thompson.’

Erin found Thompson on the map and guessed at over a 1,500 kilometre journey to get there. It was anyone’s guess how long the train would take.

‘There’s an airport at Thompson. I guess that’s why a lot of people go up there and it’s probably not to catch the train. I wish we had another haul back,’ Erin said.

‘I doubt we’d get one going that way. It all looks pretty remote to me. Once we get to Calgary we can hopefully get a coach back to Edmonton and on to wherever we need to go westward,’ Martha said. ‘And you know we can’t fly, not that we have the money to. I’ll bet the train will offer some stunning scenery. You’d miss that up in the air.’

‘But you know we’re all racing for the same train just like we did for the ferry to Haida Gwaii, so they’ll all catch up at some point,’ said Erin.

‘Not necessarily. If, for example, Harrison and Sam don’t make it after being five hours behind us and miss the train, they will never catch us up. Now, do you want to share the croissant I pinched from the breakfast buffet?’

‘I do,’ said Noah from the seat behind them.

* * *

In Calgary they made their way back to the bus station to gather as much information as they could. And it was clear that they had a long way to go and it was going to be costly.

‘That sleeper train is a popular tourist trip,’ the man behind the counter told them. ‘The next one goes in two days’ time and not again for three days. I wouldn’t hang around if you need to get on it.’

‘When’s the next bus to Edmonton?’ Martha asked.

The bus from Banff to Calgary was an hour and a half, and to Edmonton was going to take them another four or five hours. Erin was already feeling a little twitchy from all the sitting down.

‘You’ve just missed the ten o’clock, so the next one leaves at two thirty and will get you to Edmonton for six forty.’

‘Argh! There goes our lead,’ Erin said. ‘At this rate we’ll all be getting on the two thirty together.’