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

I have a little time this morning so I figured that perhaps it is time to start writing and sharing photos from our cross-country rail journey.  It was a very long journey so I have a lot to write and a lot of photos to share.  In my preliminary notes for writing about this trip, I have broken the trip down into about 30 blog entries.  Of course, there is no way I will be able to write and share 30 blog entries today so I will continue to chip away at this list whenever I have some extra time and am feeling well enough to write.   So, back in March, in the wee hours of the morning in darkness, we excitedly prepared to leave the house on this long anticipated journey by rail.  This had always been a dream trip for us...  traveling across the entire country by rail... visiting various cities along the way... seeing the country right outside our windows from one coast to the other... s o we were pretty excited.  Neither one of us probably got much sleep that night before we left! We s

For many years, Sheila and I have been talking about and dreaming about one day taking a journey across the country by rail. It has always been one of those things we've wanted to do someday when the opportunity presented itself. There is something about train travel... it has a romantic air about it... it is classic... it is relaxed by comparison to other modes of transportation... and it provides spectacular vistas as we wind our way across the country. This was one of those trips that we always figured would have to wait until after Sheila retires since we knew it would be a time consuming trip but Adam recently moved to California so that has prompted us to take a closer look at transportation options. One way or another, we were headed to California to visit Adam. We figured why not do it in style and the way we want? Originally, whenever we talked about a cross country rail journey, we talked about stopping at various cities along the way. We'd spend a night or two