MY itinerary told me this was going to be a 20-hour journey, which sounded like a long time to be sitting on a train, so I had a pile of magazines and a good book ready to get me from Vancouver to the Alberta settlement of Jasper.
I am riding The Canadian, the sleek silver train that runs from Vancouver to Toronto, but I'm only a passenger for 20 hours which is the time it takes the engines to pull the handful of carriages through the snowy wilds of western Canada.
But the views out my cabin window have been so captivating I haven't even opened one of my magazines or found the bookmark in the novel I'm reading.
We left after dinner last night, long after the sun had set, so the first part of the journey was done in darkness but that didn't stop me from gazing out the window until well after midnight.
I had a hot shower, climbed into the bed in my cabin, and watched the lights flash past outside seeing the city give way to a snowy landscape with great piles of white stuff all that's left from last week's frigid cold snap.
When I woke this morning we were well into the elevated forests of British Columbia, with the snow so abundant I could only see the very top branches of the immature pines growing between the tracks and the sheer peaks of the Rocky Mountains.
The driver even slowed down so we could see a frozen waterfall, with ice clinging to the rocks and only a trickle of water resisting the freezing temperatures to continue tumbling.
The train will get me to Jasper in a few hours, where I will be able to snap a few pictures before the wheels start turning and it leaves the station for the next stop on the long journey across Canada.
