The Expansive West

It was really odd... we seemed to make it through Moffat Tunnel and to Winter Park far more quickly than I had imagined. I felt like we were in some sort of weird time warp. I somehow always envisioned Moffat Tunnel as being much closer to California than what is real. Yet, we still had two days left to travel before we would arrive in Adam's new hometown in California.

The first part of this segment along the Colorado River was beautiful even if shrouded in falling snow.

That solid straight embankment along the edge of the river is I-70...

Around mid-afternoon each day, we would venture from our Sleeper Car to the Lounge Car for a few drinks before dinner service to watch the scenery pass by outside our mostly-glass car...

We are now putting some distance between us and that bomb cyclone snowstorm at this point and the weather is beginning to clear...

It was somewhere around this point where the isolated, undeveloped, expansive west became strikingly noticeable. It was this next segment of our journey that would make me better understand just how expansive, almost empty, this part of our country really is... I think we traveled for a full day without seeing a building, a home, a vehicle, even a structure or a single other human being outside of our train!

Dinner service in the Dining Car... choosing a salad dressing...

This was my view from my bunk when I awoke the following morning. The sun was just coming up and beginning to illuminate the eastern horizon behind us. My camera was always perched near the window of our roomette so I could easily capture moments like this...