Scattered Thoughts . . .

Our visit earlier in the day to The Palace of Fine Arts was beautiful and, honestly, I could have spent another few hours there just shooting photos of the gardens, architecture and wildlife.  I am drawn to classic architecture and this architecture is classic, immense and not something you see often on this continent.  Additionally, there was plenty of wildlife to capture in images all day long as well.   The environment, as a whole, was peaceful and comfortable while the weather was sunny and beautiful especially since we were still mostly accustomed to the snowy, wintry weather we had departed just a week earlier.  Unfortunately, our time in San Francisco was very limited since this was just one city of many we visited during our long cross-country journey by rail.  We had a lot to fit into two short weeks so there was no lingering to be done during any of our sightseeing excursions.  Before long, we needed to get going.  We had one more thing planned for our day after walking a

Note:  I found this blog entry about the very beginning of our cross-country rail journey in my "Drafts" folder long after I had already started writing about this trip so this entry is not in chronological order with the rest of my entries about this trip.  Chronological or not, it is now finished and published. I've been very undecided about how to tackle writing about such a long trip while sharing some of the photos I shot  (I plan to share only a select few of the 8500+ photos) and even a few video clips.  For now, I decided to write mostly chronologically.  If some other topic pops up in the middle of a different topic, I may stray from this plan.   In the months leading up to this rather complex trip while planning for this once in a lifetime cross-country journey by rail, we knew that we would be traveling for a minimum of two weeks.  The plan was to squeeze in as much as possible in this relatively short period of time.  Any delays, any weather problems an

After spending a few days in Roseville and Sacramento visiting Adam and Joi, we turned in our rental car and hopped on a train to San Francisco.  Adam and Joi accompanied us on this part of our journey so there were no goodbyes necessary just yet. There is no doubt that we had been looking forward to spending time with Adam and Joi in Roseville but spending time in San Francisco was the main attraction of our long cross-country journey in my mind.  I was definitely looking forward to spending time in San Francisco but I also think Sheila, Will and Sue were excited about this part of our journey as well.  We headed to the Sacramento train station in the morning.  Sheila and I dropped everyone off at the station and then she and I headed to the rental car place about a mile away in downtown Sacramento.  We dropped the keys in the drop box and then called for an Uber to take us back to the station where everyone was waiting for us... The Sacramento train station is a bit spread o

Our last full day in Roseville was rather nice.  First we visited the air base and got a bit of a guided tour by Adam.  We had lunch at an Irish Pub (it was the day before St Paddy's Day) that was more like a  dive  sports bar.  Then, we actually had a little time to unwind and spend some time at the hotel pool before heading out to dinner with Joi's mom joining us.  It sounds like it was a busy day but it was actually the most laid back day we had while in California.  For a pleasant change, we actually had some time to kill which is why we ended up in the pool at the hotel. While on the air base, we stopped at the Coyote Pub and Grill to use the restrooms and get some cash from an ATM.  I have to say that it was difficult leaving that place because the NCAA basketball playoffs were on the big screen and they had the channel turned to the Florida game...  a game I wanted to see.  I knew if we stayed for the game it would lead to a few drinks, getting a bit too comfortable (a

The terrain and landscape that was passing outside our windows had changed.  The changes were obvious.  When we checked our gear and timetables, we found that we had passed into California. We had a speedometer app running in our roomette...  an altimeter app running...  and, when we could get cell service, an active map.  Will had his GPS Garmin running across the hall in his roomette.  I also had a scanner so I could listen in to any necessary train radio chatter or even any emergency radio chatter.   Actually, writing about all these electronics reminds me that we had a little problem somewhere in the middle of that expansive west that I wrote about in my previous blog entry.  In the middle of nowhere, we heard a thump and then the train came to a stop.  This is when having the scanner would provide us some information. By listening to my little handheld scanner, I learned that we had hit a stacked pile of rocks on the track.  Clearly, someone had deliberately piled these rock

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, exp