Chapter 16
ERIN
Erin had the envelope in her hand and she pulled out the card inside, excited to see where they were going next. After a comfortable night and a full day of relaxation around the resort, she felt regenerated and back into racing mode.
Your third checkpoint is Churchill
‘Any idea?’ she asked her grandmother.
‘None,’ Martha said.
They were outside the front of the hotel with Cally and Noah hovering to catch their reaction. Femi and Liz had already left and they had a twenty-minute lead over Priya and Tara. Erin spread out the map and they scoured the options heading north and east.
‘Femi and Harrison were right,’ Erin said as her finger landed at a spot on Hudson Bay. ‘We are going north.’
‘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.’
‘Not Harrison, though,’ Martha said to Erin under her breath. ‘I can take comfort from that at least.’
‘We’re trying to get on the train to Churchill. Would you be able to give us some help in which would be the best way to go, please,’ Erin said.
The man tapped away on his keyboard and turned the screen around so they could see.
‘Your easy options are bus to Edmonton and then on the Saskatoon. The Saskatoon bus leaves tomorrow at eleven fifteen and takes about eight hours. Then you can get to Canora, which is a short hop to pick up the train.’
‘What are you calling a short hop?’ Martha asked him dubiously.
‘Only about 320 kilometres. Should only take you a few hours.’
‘You can get from the south-western tip of our country to the northern tip in fifteen hours,’ Martha said.
‘And is that a good thing?’ he asked.
‘I don’t even know any more,’ Martha said and they shared a smile.
‘And is that the route you would take?’ Erin asked, aware of a small queue gathering behind her.
‘Yes, I would,’ he said. ‘You could continue on the southern route through the Badlands, and that’s a striking landscape. It’s more direct but it’s a route less travelled and if you don’t have your own transport…’
He trailed off and Erin had already decided it wouldn’t be the route they’d be taking.
‘Thank you so much for the information,’ she said. ‘We’ll come back when we’ve decided what to do.’
Outside, they spread the map out again and really looked at the options. It was looking like they wouldn’t be going further than Edmonton today.
‘The next bus to Saskatoon isn’t until tomorrow anyway so we’re looking at a night in Edmonton.’
‘We could get a taxi to Edmonton,’ Martha said.
‘You want to get a taxi so you don’t have to get on the bus with the others?
That would cost a fortune. We’ve been very lucky with lifts up until now, but this is a huge area we need to cover.
We’ll be better off on the coaches. Maybe we can hitch between Saskatoon and the train station at Canora.
Can we just go and get a coffee for now? ’
They found out a taxi was going to set them back about $500 and dismissed the idea immediately. The bus tickets were a no brainer at $80 for them both and at two thirty they were on board. Martha was looking for the others but the doors closed without anyone from the race getting on.
‘I don’t know if that makes me feel better or worse,’ Martha said. ‘Because I don’t think they’ve missed the bus. I worry they’ve made a better choice than us, found a faster and cheaper route.’
‘Too late now,’ Erin said. ‘Our choice has been made and personally, I think it’s a good one.’
They found a hostel in Edmonton and it wasn’t anything like the luxury of the hotel they’d just vacated but it was clean, and once they had settled into the dormitory room and made a little small talk with the other women, they tried to get as much sleep as possible to gear themselves up for the eight-hour bus journey the next day.
The bus station turned out to be where everyone met up again.
Erin had lulled herself into the false security that they had chosen the best route and would get ahead of the others.
But, as they all discussed the different paths they had taken, it was clear that with only so many options available to them it was difficult to get a clear advantage, particularly in this part of the country.
So even Harrison and Sam had managed to catch up with the pack.
No matter what they had chosen it seemed they were still all going to be on the same coach out of Edmonton.
The coach was loaded up with camera crew and there was a line of producer cars behind.
‘Is this a joke?’ Liz said. ‘We could do this race all holding hands in a line.’
Martha laughed and Erin glanced over at Sam. He was smiling at her as if he had it carefully arranged and had been waiting for her to look his way. She turned from him and decided to keep her head down and read her book as the bus bounced them out of Alberta and into the province of Saskatchewan.