Scattered Thoughts . . .

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....

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 arou...

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 cycl...