ON THE TRAINS
WEDNESDAY 9TH SEPTEMBER 2015
Heather and my wedding anniversary today. 48 years. It was like today, sunny, warm. Not as warm as it is here, of course, where it is hot again but it was a lovely warm and sunny September day. I remember having a lump in my throat and a tear in my eye as Heather walked up the aisle toward me, she looked so lovely.
C and I walk across Broadway to a branch of Applebee’s and have breakfast and then back to the hotel to pack our bags. We check out and I sit in the lobby area with the luggage while Cyril goes off to look around the shops. We want a road atlas of the United States but are having trouble finding one. It seems everyone has ‘sat-navs’ now and don’t need road maps.
I sit in the lobby, plug my laptop in and start trying to bring this journal up to date having fallen behind with it, we have been moving around so much these last few days. After a couple of hours Cyril comes back, his search for a road atlas unsuccessful, even Macy’s didn't have one. We gather ourselves together and make our way outside dragging our cases round the corner onto Broadway. Almost immediately a taxi sees us and stops. “Penn Station” we tell him, “Where you goin.’” He asks. “Chicago.” We tell him. But fifteen minutes later I begin to wonder if we are as we have moved no more than 100 yards. The traffic is log-jammed. Bus’s blocking traffic light intersections so that nothing can move. Horns are blaring and then a police car is behind us flipping his siren on and off impatiently. He gets past us and eventually we start to move too. It takes half an hour to get to Penn Station. We probably could have walked it in twenty minutes. It is hot again, as hot as it gets in Florida.
The train is long. Twelve carriages, maybe more, the platform curves and the end of “The Lake Shore Ltd” is out of sight. We board and find seats on the left hand side. They are roomy, plenty of space on the overhead racks for our cases etc. Each seat has pull down trays like on an aircraft, and collapse backwards at an angle for sleeping. We start to move at exactly 03.40. Under a tunnel, for a few minutes and then out into the sunlight, the wide Hudson River by our side.
The train is half empty but more passengers will be boarding at Albany, a couple of hours away. We get talking to a black couple sitting just behind us, Deborough and Virgil. She is tall, good figure, he smaller, gold front teeth, both of them friendly. They are going to Las Vegas, they tell us. It’s her birthday today, 54 she says. She looks barely 40, her skin smooth, not a wrinkle in sight. She gives us a miniature bottle each, alcohol of some sort. “Have a drink!” She says. “It’s my birthday!”
WEDNESDAY 9TH SEPTEMBER 2015
Heather and my wedding anniversary today. 48 years. It was like today, sunny, warm. Not as warm as it is here, of course, where it is hot again but it was a lovely warm and sunny September day. I remember having a lump in my throat and a tear in my eye as Heather walked up the aisle toward me, she looked so lovely.
C and I walk across Broadway to a branch of Applebee’s and have breakfast and then back to the hotel to pack our bags. We check out and I sit in the lobby area with the luggage while Cyril goes off to look around the shops. We want a road atlas of the United States but are having trouble finding one. It seems everyone has ‘sat-navs’ now and don’t need road maps.
I sit in the lobby, plug my laptop in and start trying to bring this journal up to date having fallen behind with it, we have been moving around so much these last few days. After a couple of hours Cyril comes back, his search for a road atlas unsuccessful, even Macy’s didn't have one. We gather ourselves together and make our way outside dragging our cases round the corner onto Broadway. Almost immediately a taxi sees us and stops. “Penn Station” we tell him, “Where you goin.’” He asks. “Chicago.” We tell him. But fifteen minutes later I begin to wonder if we are as we have moved no more than 100 yards. The traffic is log-jammed. Bus’s blocking traffic light intersections so that nothing can move. Horns are blaring and then a police car is behind us flipping his siren on and off impatiently. He gets past us and eventually we start to move too. It takes half an hour to get to Penn Station. We probably could have walked it in twenty minutes. It is hot again, as hot as it gets in Florida.
The train is long. Twelve carriages, maybe more, the platform curves and the end of “The Lake Shore Ltd” is out of sight. We board and find seats on the left hand side. They are roomy, plenty of space on the overhead racks for our cases etc. Each seat has pull down trays like on an aircraft, and collapse backwards at an angle for sleeping. We start to move at exactly 03.40. Under a tunnel, for a few minutes and then out into the sunlight, the wide Hudson River by our side.
The train is half empty but more passengers will be boarding at Albany, a couple of hours away. We get talking to a black couple sitting just behind us, Deborough and Virgil. She is tall, good figure, he smaller, gold front teeth, both of them friendly. They are going to Las Vegas, they tell us. It’s her birthday today, 54 she says. She looks barely 40, her skin smooth, not a wrinkle in sight. She gives us a miniature bottle each, alcohol of some sort. “Have a drink!” She says. “It’s my birthday!”
We reach Albany and as predicted more passengers have boarded and, although not full, it is definitely more crowded. It gets to 7.20 or so and we haven’t moved. After a while we are told there will be a delay as our engine is being disconnected so it can be used on another train that has broken down east of us. But we are not to worry as it will be back in an hour and we will be on our way. The hour stretches to two-and-a-half hours so now we are going to be late into Chicago, which means we won’t be able to see much of the city as we thought we would. It has started to rain.
It is dark when we leave Albany and it has stopped raining. We make our way to the dining car and have a meal, which I was not too impressed with. I had a beef burger and a few chips with a couple of lettuce leaves and small slivers of onion. C had chicken that he said was good. Expensive though, the bill came to close on $40. And we got the impression the crew was anxious for us to leave as we were the last to dine.
After the meal we settled down for the night, though I can’t say it I had a comfortable sleep. The seats are like airline seats, as I think I mentioned, but bigger, even so, not easy to sleep in.
Later we make out way through the train to the snack bar carriage where they sell coffee, snacks, and cans of beer. We buy two ($5.50 each) and sit down opposite a couple both looking out of the window. He taking photographs. We are still running along side of the Hudson and, if anything, it is even wider here.
The couple are married, both GPs they tell us. Jeanette and Nigel. Jeanette is Scottish, Nigel English. We are travelling across the United States, it’s big, vast, there are what? 250 million people scattered across it, but it doesn’t matter because it’s a small world. We mention we were in Norfolk last weekend, in Upton for my half brothers 60th birthday celebrations. Jeanette says, “That’s where we live, near Great Yarmouth. I know Upton, we know the The White Horse. Your brother really lives there?” We assure her Richard really does live there.
“I know Upton Dyke.” She says. “I bet I know his house, at the end of the dyke? Yes, yes, I do.”
Small world.
We are able to plug the lap-tops in to the trains system but are unable to get on to the internet. It did connect for a few minutes but it dropped out and I couldn’t get it back.
THURSDAY 10TH SEPTEMBER 2015
Heather’s birthday today. There is no Internet connection so I can’t email her. I’ll try to ‘phone later.
We crossed in to Ohio during the night stopping at several places picking up and dropping off passengers: Elria, Sanbuskey, Toledo. At one stop, where passengers were advised we could get off to stretch our legs, or have a smoke, we clambered down the steps and stood at the side of the train trying to call Heather. Eventually I got her mobile to ring out but it just went to ‘leave a message’ so I sang a little of ‘Happy birthday to you’ and left a message.
We progress westwards, cross in to Indiana. The countryside is flat, green, thousands of acres of corn, almost ripe. The clocks go back an hour. The train passes through small towns with few people about; neat looking houses with neat gardens, little traffic. We stop at Waterloo, Indiana, Elkhart, Indiana, just a few minutes at each. At 11.40 we are in South Bend, Indiana. Then it is announced we should be in Chicago, Illinois, by one pm.
The train ride, so far, has not been quite what I expected. The PA, which crackles in to life every now and then, is simply to tell us what the next station will be, usually ten minutes before we get there. It is mostly inaudible. The train itself rattles along at about 65 – 80 mph but it seems to be constantly slowing down, then speeding back up again. When it goes over points it sways and bangs and rattles, sometimes quite alarmingly.
We arrive at Chicago at 1 p.m. and gather ourselves together, say goodbye to Deborough and Virgil, and walk down the long, dark and gloomy platform, dragging our bags and asking each other, “Have you got everything?” It is warm, not hot the way New York was.
The Amtrak First Class lounge is modern and comfortable. We are given red tickets for access. I have time to go outside and take a couple of photos of the station building. A few minutes after I get back in to the lounge we are taken down to track 10 where ‘The Californian Zephyr” waits. After a little confusion about which ‘car’ we were on – the girl reading out the car numbers and which ticket related to which – had got it all wrong, we clamber aboard and dragging our bags up the narrow staircase, we find our ‘room.’ It may be called a room but it certainly is not roomy. The ‘sleeper’ that Cary Grant and Eva Marie Saint had in "North By North West," this is not.
Lonnie, our attendant, introduces himself and explains the various facilities the room has: shower/toilet, electric outlets, lights, cupboards. He explains he will come in later, at about nine o’clock, and make up the beds for us; the upper bunk drops down and the lower bunk converts from the room’s seating.
The restaurant supervisor pops his head in and gives us times we can choose to have dinner. We choose 6.45 p.m.
In the Observation Car we meet up with the two doctors from Norfolk again and sit talking to them for a while. Nigel is busy taking photographs of the passing scene through the train window. We cross a very wide river.
“The mighty Mississippi,” Nigel murmurs and takes more photo’s. I should have brought my camera up here.
We leave the doctors and go down to the ‘snack bar, and have a beer. The woman looking after the bar is sitting at one of the tables talking to a colleague. She gets up and unlocks the door to the bar and serves us, then locks the door again and rejoins her friend. C and I are the only customers. Every few minutes a passenger comes in, orders coffee or crisps to take away and each time the woman running the bar gets up, unlocks, serves, locks up again and rejoins her friend and resumes their conversation which has become loud and raucous, to the extent we had difficulty in hearing each other.
We leave but as I start to climb the narrow staircase back up to the Observation Car I hear: “Hey, sir!”
I turn back. “Yes?” I say.
“Throw your trash into the trash box, please.” It's more like an order than a request. She is still sitting with her friend at the table.
I pick up the cans and plastic glasses we have left. “Where?” I say. She points to a cardboard box with “Trash” written on it, and I throw them in to it.
“Is there anything else I need to do?” I ask
“No, sir.” She says.
It seemed as if us being there was a bit of a nuisance
An announcement about the arrangements for dinner comes on the PA. “We practice community seating on The Zephyr’ the voice tells us. I presume that means we could be sat with two other passengers, and that is just the case as when we enter the dining car we are led to a table with a young girl and boy already seated. He is about 25. she barely 20.
“Hello.” We say and get ‘Hi’s’ back.
His hair is a bright purple colour on top, an ordinary brown at the sides, making him look quite bizarre, though maybe that is the idea. The girl's hair is a striking pink, a shade of pink I don't think I have seen before. He is doodling on the paper tablecloth. Squares on top of each other, circles in a row. He keeps touching the girls arm and leaning close to her and whispering. She clutches his hand and whispers back.
We study the menu. “What are you going to have?” I ask C. Steak he tells me. “Me too.” I say.
“We’re a steak table,” the girl says, smiling, “that’s what we are having.”
The boy says nothing. He is now studying the screen of his i-phone and stabbing at the keys with his fingers.
“Where are you going? I ask.
“Omaha.” The girl replies. “We’ve come from New York, we got married two weeks ago.”
“Congratulations.” C and I say together.
“Do you live in Omaha? Cyril asks.
The girl looks at the boy and he looks up from his mobile. “My children are there with my ex-wife. We are going to talk about custody.” He says and lowers his eyes back to the screen.
The meals are served. The girl tells us she is hoping to go to college to study psychiatry; the boy says he too is hoping to go to college, though I couldn’t make out, since he tended to mumble, what it was he wanted to study. Maybe it is how to play games on i-phones.
FRIDAY 11TH SEPTEMBER 2015
A good nights sleep last night, apart from waking once when the train rattled across points somewhere - I don't know where, in the middle of Nebraska perhaps, the train pitched and rolled like a ship at sea, or so it seemed. Probably it was at Omaha where we had a scheduled stop. We crossed in to Nebraska from Ohio in the early hours and also crossed the Missouri, though it I never saw.
We are now in Colorado and stopped at Fort Morgan earlier (where Glen Miller lived and went to the local high school, apparently) but we are now in Denver. More passengers boarding. This is where we start to climb through the Rockies and is the best part of the whole ride I imagine.
Reading through what I have written so far about the train trip makes me wonder if it sounds as if we are not enjoying it. Not true. We are, without a doubt enjoying the whole thing. There are some minor niggles but they are not spoiling the fact that for me, and C, this is a unique experience. No wi-fi on the train is a nuisance, obviously. The food is passable. Just. Apart from the cutlery everything is plastic: cups, glasses, plates, table cloths. The size of our "room" I have already mentioned. To be comfortable in it two people have to be very cooperative. We have four small cases between us and it was impossible to have them all in the room, so two of them are kept in the storage area on the lower deck. Using the shower/toilet as a shower is not practical, so we use the 'public' one on the lower deck which is larger and just about useable.
The staff are plentiful and helpful if needed and are reasonably friendly, apart from the lady in the snack bar whom I mentioned earlier. "The California Zephyr" itself needs a bit of a make-over. Some of the carpeting is worn, as are the stair treads on the staircase to the lower deck. The observation car is very good but the rest of the train is looking tired and needs renovation.
We leave Denver and a couple of chaps from the Parks Department have joined us and begin a commentary as we leave Denver and start the climb through The Rockies.
Before arriving at Denver we had breakfast in the diner and were seated with a couple who, from the conversation we had. were frequent 'train riders.' They were mother and son, she in her sixties, he in his thirties. Anoraks Heather would call them. Nice enough couple. They told us they were continuing up to Vancouver, by train of course, and mentioned several of the journeys they had been on in the past, including the Canadian Rockies - a "better train than this one" he said. He seemed a little excited about Denver as the station has recently been rebuilt or renovated and I think he was looking forward to seeing it.
The Californian Zephyr begins its climb, making long loops back and forth so that after a while we can see the track we had just travelled on below us.
There are views of Denver and the Great Plains beyond across which we had traversed throughout the night. We climb higher, through South Boulder Canyon and a number of short tunnels and eventually pass through the Moffat Tunnel 6.2 miles long and took four years to complete. It takes us across the Continental Divide.We stop briefly at Fraser Winter Park, in winter a ski resort, then follow the Fraser River through the Fraser Canyon.
The commentary is good, he talks of the old railway companies and how they helped form the history of the west.
Granby is briefly stopped at and we then follow close to the Colorado River winding and sparkling along beside us. There are fishermen standing in the rapidly flowing water, sunlight bouncing off it; this is a popular rapid rafting area and we see a couple of them drifting slowly down stream, the rafters on board waving up at us.
The train enters Gore Canyon on the upper Colorado River, the walls ascend 1000 feet on either side. It is only possible to get to this area by train or kayak, and the and the white water is the wildest commercially available. Then we pass Dotsero and a few miles beyond enter Glenwood Canyon with spectacular high cliffs of the 12.5 mile long gorge of the Redwood Canyon. We stop at Glenwood Springs and a number of passengers get on and off. This is a busy resort for back packers, rafters, and in the winter a skiing centre. Doc Holiday, we are told, spent the last few months of his life here.
We pass other small remote towns: Newcastle, named after the Tyneside city as it was a coal mining area in the past, until 1918 anyway, when a series of underground explosions brought an end to it. The fire caused still smoulders and they have the Annual Burning Mountain Festival in September.
Now we are at De Beque where we start a 20 mile ride through the winding De Beque Canyon and then pass Palisade.
A halt is made at Grand Junction, this is where the Gunnison and Colorado rivers join and was once known as Grand River - thus Grand Junction. Another popular resort area, surrounded by mountains and popular with skiers in the winter. It hosts a permanent country music festival which draws thousands of country music fans.
We pass Mack, the last town in Colorado before we cross the Colorado/Utah State Line and the Californian Zephyr turns south and makes its way back to the Colorado River and Ruby Canyon, taking its name from the red sandstone cliffs. Wind and rain and water and time have hewn strange and fascinating shapes in to the red rock.
Later C and I decide to return to our room and soon after the catering manager calls in to take our preferred time for dinner. At dinner the two doctors from Norfolk sit with us and they seem to be enjoying the train ride as much as we.
It is now Mountain Time, seven hours behind British Summer Time.
Eventually we reach Provo and then on to Salt Lake City. Heather and I spent time in the area in 1976 visiting our English friend, Gina, who was living with an American at the time, in Provo.
SATURDAY 12TH SEPTEMBER 2015
Another good nights sleep. I awake to the train passing through salt flats; desert as far as the eye can see, the white of the salt looking like snow. The sun has just risen lighting distant mountains. We have breakfast as the train slips past small towns, some of them looking scruffy and neglected, with trailer settlements on the edges; houses with dumped cars in the front yards.
We are now in Pacific Time - another hour back, making us 8
hours behind the UK.
The train passes through the small town of Fernley, it apparently has a 750,000 square foot distribution centre for Amazon. We make a stop at Reno "The biggest Little City In the world" it claims. A gambling town, much smaller than Las Vegas. Heather and I were here during that same 1976 holiday and won enough on the slot machines to pay for our brief stay.
The Nevada/California State Line is crossed and we run alongside busy roads for a while and then we cross back and forth as we ascend a series of plateaus as we begin the climb over the Donner Pass to the peak of the Sierra Mountains and we can see far below the Truckee Basin. The Donner party travelling west from Illinois were stranded near here in the winter of 1846-47 and only 48 survived out of 87. The survivors had resorted to cannibalism. In a typical winter 30 feet of snow falls in this area.
We are now some 7,000 feet above sea level and the highest the train reaches as it crosses the Sierra's. Soon we are descending, the train twisting back and forth, round a series of bends, mostly through thickly wooded areas.
I leave the Observation car and go back to our room and start to gather our stuff together as in a few hours our train journey across America will come to an end and we will be in San Francisco.
We stop at Sacramento, Davis, Martinez, Richmond. At around four o'clock in the afternoon we are pulling in to Emeryville, the end of the train's journey. We are here much earlier than expected and most people are off the train before we realise this part of our trip has ended. We say 'goodbye' to Lonnie, our attendant, who is standing at the exit door, give him a tip and drag our cases down the long platform to the station entrance where a bus is waiting, its engine ticking over.
The bus crosses the Bay Bridge and we glimpse the Golden Gate Bridge in the distance, then we drop down to the city and stop, briefly, at the bus station, then on to the Pier 39 area, crowded with tourists, and the traffic here thick. Progress is slow but after about twenty minutes and another couple of stops we reach the Union Square area. Cyril had spotted our hotel, Parc 55, from the bus and it’s only a five minute walk from where we have alighted.
It is dark when we leave Albany and it has stopped raining. We make our way to the dining car and have a meal, which I was not too impressed with. I had a beef burger and a few chips with a couple of lettuce leaves and small slivers of onion. C had chicken that he said was good. Expensive though, the bill came to close on $40. And we got the impression the crew was anxious for us to leave as we were the last to dine.
After the meal we settled down for the night, though I can’t say it I had a comfortable sleep. The seats are like airline seats, as I think I mentioned, but bigger, even so, not easy to sleep in.
Later we make out way through the train to the snack bar carriage where they sell coffee, snacks, and cans of beer. We buy two ($5.50 each) and sit down opposite a couple both looking out of the window. He taking photographs. We are still running along side of the Hudson and, if anything, it is even wider here.
The couple are married, both GPs they tell us. Jeanette and Nigel. Jeanette is Scottish, Nigel English. We are travelling across the United States, it’s big, vast, there are what? 250 million people scattered across it, but it doesn’t matter because it’s a small world. We mention we were in Norfolk last weekend, in Upton for my half brothers 60th birthday celebrations. Jeanette says, “That’s where we live, near Great Yarmouth. I know Upton, we know the The White Horse. Your brother really lives there?” We assure her Richard really does live there.
“I know Upton Dyke.” She says. “I bet I know his house, at the end of the dyke? Yes, yes, I do.”
Small world.
We are able to plug the lap-tops in to the trains system but are unable to get on to the internet. It did connect for a few minutes but it dropped out and I couldn’t get it back.
THURSDAY 10TH SEPTEMBER 2015
Heather’s birthday today. There is no Internet connection so I can’t email her. I’ll try to ‘phone later.
We crossed in to Ohio during the night stopping at several places picking up and dropping off passengers: Elria, Sanbuskey, Toledo. At one stop, where passengers were advised we could get off to stretch our legs, or have a smoke, we clambered down the steps and stood at the side of the train trying to call Heather. Eventually I got her mobile to ring out but it just went to ‘leave a message’ so I sang a little of ‘Happy birthday to you’ and left a message.
We progress westwards, cross in to Indiana. The countryside is flat, green, thousands of acres of corn, almost ripe. The clocks go back an hour. The train passes through small towns with few people about; neat looking houses with neat gardens, little traffic. We stop at Waterloo, Indiana, Elkhart, Indiana, just a few minutes at each. At 11.40 we are in South Bend, Indiana. Then it is announced we should be in Chicago, Illinois, by one pm.
The train ride, so far, has not been quite what I expected. The PA, which crackles in to life every now and then, is simply to tell us what the next station will be, usually ten minutes before we get there. It is mostly inaudible. The train itself rattles along at about 65 – 80 mph but it seems to be constantly slowing down, then speeding back up again. When it goes over points it sways and bangs and rattles, sometimes quite alarmingly.
We arrive at Chicago at 1 p.m. and gather ourselves together, say goodbye to Deborough and Virgil, and walk down the long, dark and gloomy platform, dragging our bags and asking each other, “Have you got everything?” It is warm, not hot the way New York was.
The Amtrak First Class lounge is modern and comfortable. We are given red tickets for access. I have time to go outside and take a couple of photos of the station building. A few minutes after I get back in to the lounge we are taken down to track 10 where ‘The Californian Zephyr” waits. After a little confusion about which ‘car’ we were on – the girl reading out the car numbers and which ticket related to which – had got it all wrong, we clamber aboard and dragging our bags up the narrow staircase, we find our ‘room.’ It may be called a room but it certainly is not roomy. The ‘sleeper’ that Cary Grant and Eva Marie Saint had in "North By North West," this is not.
Lonnie, our attendant, introduces himself and explains the various facilities the room has: shower/toilet, electric outlets, lights, cupboards. He explains he will come in later, at about nine o’clock, and make up the beds for us; the upper bunk drops down and the lower bunk converts from the room’s seating.
The restaurant supervisor pops his head in and gives us times we can choose to have dinner. We choose 6.45 p.m.
In the Observation Car we meet up with the two doctors from Norfolk again and sit talking to them for a while. Nigel is busy taking photographs of the passing scene through the train window. We cross a very wide river.
“The mighty Mississippi,” Nigel murmurs and takes more photo’s. I should have brought my camera up here.
We leave the doctors and go down to the ‘snack bar, and have a beer. The woman looking after the bar is sitting at one of the tables talking to a colleague. She gets up and unlocks the door to the bar and serves us, then locks the door again and rejoins her friend. C and I are the only customers. Every few minutes a passenger comes in, orders coffee or crisps to take away and each time the woman running the bar gets up, unlocks, serves, locks up again and rejoins her friend and resumes their conversation which has become loud and raucous, to the extent we had difficulty in hearing each other.
We leave but as I start to climb the narrow staircase back up to the Observation Car I hear: “Hey, sir!”
I turn back. “Yes?” I say.
“Throw your trash into the trash box, please.” It's more like an order than a request. She is still sitting with her friend at the table.
I pick up the cans and plastic glasses we have left. “Where?” I say. She points to a cardboard box with “Trash” written on it, and I throw them in to it.
“Is there anything else I need to do?” I ask
“No, sir.” She says.
It seemed as if us being there was a bit of a nuisance
An announcement about the arrangements for dinner comes on the PA. “We practice community seating on The Zephyr’ the voice tells us. I presume that means we could be sat with two other passengers, and that is just the case as when we enter the dining car we are led to a table with a young girl and boy already seated. He is about 25. she barely 20.
“Hello.” We say and get ‘Hi’s’ back.
His hair is a bright purple colour on top, an ordinary brown at the sides, making him look quite bizarre, though maybe that is the idea. The girl's hair is a striking pink, a shade of pink I don't think I have seen before. He is doodling on the paper tablecloth. Squares on top of each other, circles in a row. He keeps touching the girls arm and leaning close to her and whispering. She clutches his hand and whispers back.
We study the menu. “What are you going to have?” I ask C. Steak he tells me. “Me too.” I say.
“We’re a steak table,” the girl says, smiling, “that’s what we are having.”
The boy says nothing. He is now studying the screen of his i-phone and stabbing at the keys with his fingers.
“Where are you going? I ask.
“Omaha.” The girl replies. “We’ve come from New York, we got married two weeks ago.”
“Congratulations.” C and I say together.
“Do you live in Omaha? Cyril asks.
The girl looks at the boy and he looks up from his mobile. “My children are there with my ex-wife. We are going to talk about custody.” He says and lowers his eyes back to the screen.
The meals are served. The girl tells us she is hoping to go to college to study psychiatry; the boy says he too is hoping to go to college, though I couldn’t make out, since he tended to mumble, what it was he wanted to study. Maybe it is how to play games on i-phones.
FRIDAY 11TH SEPTEMBER 2015
A good nights sleep last night, apart from waking once when the train rattled across points somewhere - I don't know where, in the middle of Nebraska perhaps, the train pitched and rolled like a ship at sea, or so it seemed. Probably it was at Omaha where we had a scheduled stop. We crossed in to Nebraska from Ohio in the early hours and also crossed the Missouri, though it I never saw.
We are now in Colorado and stopped at Fort Morgan earlier (where Glen Miller lived and went to the local high school, apparently) but we are now in Denver. More passengers boarding. This is where we start to climb through the Rockies and is the best part of the whole ride I imagine.
Reading through what I have written so far about the train trip makes me wonder if it sounds as if we are not enjoying it. Not true. We are, without a doubt enjoying the whole thing. There are some minor niggles but they are not spoiling the fact that for me, and C, this is a unique experience. No wi-fi on the train is a nuisance, obviously. The food is passable. Just. Apart from the cutlery everything is plastic: cups, glasses, plates, table cloths. The size of our "room" I have already mentioned. To be comfortable in it two people have to be very cooperative. We have four small cases between us and it was impossible to have them all in the room, so two of them are kept in the storage area on the lower deck. Using the shower/toilet as a shower is not practical, so we use the 'public' one on the lower deck which is larger and just about useable.
The staff are plentiful and helpful if needed and are reasonably friendly, apart from the lady in the snack bar whom I mentioned earlier. "The California Zephyr" itself needs a bit of a make-over. Some of the carpeting is worn, as are the stair treads on the staircase to the lower deck. The observation car is very good but the rest of the train is looking tired and needs renovation.
We leave Denver and a couple of chaps from the Parks Department have joined us and begin a commentary as we leave Denver and start the climb through The Rockies.
Before arriving at Denver we had breakfast in the diner and were seated with a couple who, from the conversation we had. were frequent 'train riders.' They were mother and son, she in her sixties, he in his thirties. Anoraks Heather would call them. Nice enough couple. They told us they were continuing up to Vancouver, by train of course, and mentioned several of the journeys they had been on in the past, including the Canadian Rockies - a "better train than this one" he said. He seemed a little excited about Denver as the station has recently been rebuilt or renovated and I think he was looking forward to seeing it.
The Californian Zephyr begins its climb, making long loops back and forth so that after a while we can see the track we had just travelled on below us.
There are views of Denver and the Great Plains beyond across which we had traversed throughout the night. We climb higher, through South Boulder Canyon and a number of short tunnels and eventually pass through the Moffat Tunnel 6.2 miles long and took four years to complete. It takes us across the Continental Divide.We stop briefly at Fraser Winter Park, in winter a ski resort, then follow the Fraser River through the Fraser Canyon.
The commentary is good, he talks of the old railway companies and how they helped form the history of the west.
Granby is briefly stopped at and we then follow close to the Colorado River winding and sparkling along beside us. There are fishermen standing in the rapidly flowing water, sunlight bouncing off it; this is a popular rapid rafting area and we see a couple of them drifting slowly down stream, the rafters on board waving up at us.
The train enters Gore Canyon on the upper Colorado River, the walls ascend 1000 feet on either side. It is only possible to get to this area by train or kayak, and the and the white water is the wildest commercially available. Then we pass Dotsero and a few miles beyond enter Glenwood Canyon with spectacular high cliffs of the 12.5 mile long gorge of the Redwood Canyon. We stop at Glenwood Springs and a number of passengers get on and off. This is a busy resort for back packers, rafters, and in the winter a skiing centre. Doc Holiday, we are told, spent the last few months of his life here.
We pass other small remote towns: Newcastle, named after the Tyneside city as it was a coal mining area in the past, until 1918 anyway, when a series of underground explosions brought an end to it. The fire caused still smoulders and they have the Annual Burning Mountain Festival in September.
Now we are at De Beque where we start a 20 mile ride through the winding De Beque Canyon and then pass Palisade.
A halt is made at Grand Junction, this is where the Gunnison and Colorado rivers join and was once known as Grand River - thus Grand Junction. Another popular resort area, surrounded by mountains and popular with skiers in the winter. It hosts a permanent country music festival which draws thousands of country music fans.
We pass Mack, the last town in Colorado before we cross the Colorado/Utah State Line and the Californian Zephyr turns south and makes its way back to the Colorado River and Ruby Canyon, taking its name from the red sandstone cliffs. Wind and rain and water and time have hewn strange and fascinating shapes in to the red rock.
Later C and I decide to return to our room and soon after the catering manager calls in to take our preferred time for dinner. At dinner the two doctors from Norfolk sit with us and they seem to be enjoying the train ride as much as we.
It is now Mountain Time, seven hours behind British Summer Time.
Eventually we reach Provo and then on to Salt Lake City. Heather and I spent time in the area in 1976 visiting our English friend, Gina, who was living with an American at the time, in Provo.
SATURDAY 12TH SEPTEMBER 2015
Another good nights sleep. I awake to the train passing through salt flats; desert as far as the eye can see, the white of the salt looking like snow. The sun has just risen lighting distant mountains. We have breakfast as the train slips past small towns, some of them looking scruffy and neglected, with trailer settlements on the edges; houses with dumped cars in the front yards.
We are now in Pacific Time - another hour back, making us 8
hours behind the UK.
The train passes through the small town of Fernley, it apparently has a 750,000 square foot distribution centre for Amazon. We make a stop at Reno "The biggest Little City In the world" it claims. A gambling town, much smaller than Las Vegas. Heather and I were here during that same 1976 holiday and won enough on the slot machines to pay for our brief stay.
The Nevada/California State Line is crossed and we run alongside busy roads for a while and then we cross back and forth as we ascend a series of plateaus as we begin the climb over the Donner Pass to the peak of the Sierra Mountains and we can see far below the Truckee Basin. The Donner party travelling west from Illinois were stranded near here in the winter of 1846-47 and only 48 survived out of 87. The survivors had resorted to cannibalism. In a typical winter 30 feet of snow falls in this area.
We are now some 7,000 feet above sea level and the highest the train reaches as it crosses the Sierra's. Soon we are descending, the train twisting back and forth, round a series of bends, mostly through thickly wooded areas.
I leave the Observation car and go back to our room and start to gather our stuff together as in a few hours our train journey across America will come to an end and we will be in San Francisco.
We stop at Sacramento, Davis, Martinez, Richmond. At around four o'clock in the afternoon we are pulling in to Emeryville, the end of the train's journey. We are here much earlier than expected and most people are off the train before we realise this part of our trip has ended. We say 'goodbye' to Lonnie, our attendant, who is standing at the exit door, give him a tip and drag our cases down the long platform to the station entrance where a bus is waiting, its engine ticking over.
The bus crosses the Bay Bridge and we glimpse the Golden Gate Bridge in the distance, then we drop down to the city and stop, briefly, at the bus station, then on to the Pier 39 area, crowded with tourists, and the traffic here thick. Progress is slow but after about twenty minutes and another couple of stops we reach the Union Square area. Cyril had spotted our hotel, Parc 55, from the bus and it’s only a five minute walk from where we have alighted.