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.  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

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