Scattered Thoughts . . .

As we departed Denver on Amtrak's historic and scenic California Zephyr, the rain quickly turned to a heavy wet snow.  We had already been warned that we would be trying to get through a bomb cyclone snow storm before it was impassable.   We slowly made our way into the Rocky Mountains.  We had been looking forward to seeing the scenery on this part of our journey because everything we read about it told us it is spectacular.  This route is actually famous for the beautiful scenery through this section of the country so we were definitely looking forward to this part of our journey.    Passing through this bomb cyclone turned out to be a good news-bad news sort of thing.  The good news was that the snow would probably add interest to the landscape and particularly the expansive views out the windows of our roomette.  As a photographer, I was excited about that.  The bad news is that while the snow is falling from this monstrous cyclone circling far overhead, we probably won

After our lunch in Chicago at Lou Mitchell's restaurant and a little bit of a sightseeing walk back to Union Station, we spent a little time in the brand new Amtrak Metropolitan Lounge before boarding the California Zephyr.  The Zephyr would take us all the way to California through scenic sights such as the Rocky Mountains, Sierra Nevadas, Moffat Tunnel, Colorado's Gore Canyon, Byers Canyon, Glenwood Canyon, Winter Park, Truckee River, Donner Pass, Donner Lake, and then into Roseville California where we would be greeted by Adam.  This leg of our journey would take about 50 hours spread across three days of the week. Since this leg is so long, I have decided to split up the blog entries for this leg.  This blog entry will be about our journey from Chicago to Denver.  We would be in Denver in just less than 24 hours after departing Chicago and traveling through Illinois, Iowa, Nebraska and part of Colorado. Although we enjoy every leg of our rail journeys, we were all very