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CANADA ( WJTV ) – The Rocky Mountaineer is a tourist train that leaves Vancouver, British Columbia, and travels northeastward up into the Canadian range of the Rocky Mountains with destinations either to Jasper or Banff.

I love mountains. Maybe because what you don't have or can't have is what seems to be the most desirous to us. And in Mississippi, our tallest hill isn't even 1,000-feet above sea level, so any place that you have to look up to see the top of is amazing to me.

As the train was leaving Vancouver, I found myself showing video of anything taller than an Indian mound. And the farther we traveled, the taller the mountains got.

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Then the interesting peaks were complimented by equally interesting valleys, rivers and lakes, all colored a particular light blue. They told us the blue hue comes from rock powder, which are rocks that have been pulverized and smashed down to their smallest increments by glaciers. We'd see glaciers later, but not right away. The blue water is something I spot in movies and even TV commercials sometimes, probably because so much television and movie production is headquartered in Vancouver.

As the train moves away from the main highways and on into the wilderness, you really get a sense that you are a nomad or an explorer, and every bend in the track leads to a new discovery, each one worth the trip to see that one particular thing.

I think to myself, "I could live down that road back up in there." But then again, this is Canada, and it is summer and not a snow smothered winter. But this is also imagination. Don't spoil it with reality. Reality is what we had back home and came here to run away from.

The mountains continued to grow, and there was a desert. I had never even thought of Canada having a desert, and a glacier blue river danced through the heart of it.

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