the journey begins!

Hello everyone!

Ella and I have arrived safe and sound in San Francisco (as of Tuesday night/Wednesday morning or so). Our train trip was long (much longer than we had originally anticipated), but ultimately really fun and an experience we would both gladly do again.

We left New York Penn Station on Saturday afternoon to head out to Chicago on the Lake Shore Limited. The trip was not particularly scenic, especially since the lakes we were supposedly passing were all passed in the middle of the night. We had a lovely time, though, slept surprisingly well, and for the most part kept to ourselves. I woke up in the morning to hear one of our neighbors (whose name we unfortunately never found out) talking to another neighbor, Jim, who had boarded the train in Cleveland in the middle of the night and was 59. Jim was talking about how before she died, his mother painted farmhouse scenes and how he brought a digital camera with him to take pictures of houses his mother might have liked to paint. I found him pretty immediately endearing, and Ella and I spent the morning talking to him before arriving in Chicago.

We arrived in Chicago only an hour late (a miracle for Amtrak as we later found out) and met Molly, a good friend of mine from Sarah Lawrence. She took us around town, showed us her new apartment, and went with us to get food that didn't involve adding hot water and waiting for three minutes. All in all, a good visit, but much too short.

In Chicago, we boarded our next train: the California Zephyr. This train was much nicer and larger than the Lake Shore Limited-- we sat on the top of a double decker. Our first conductor was very chatty and during his "opening remarks" (as put them), he reminded us to enjoy our afternoon riding through the breadbasket of America- the greatest country in the world. Apart from being horrifyingly ridden with corn fields, the Midwest is actually quite lovely and, as expected, flat. We spent our afternoon riding through Illinois and Iowa, and rode through Nebraska in the night.

We woke up creeping toward Denver, Colorado, with a very cute three-year-old peering at us over the seatback in front of us. Ella woke up before I did and took lots of pictures of morning mist rising over fields (once we figure out how to post pictures we will definitely do so). We arrived in Denver somewhere around 8 AM and departed soon thereafter to embark on our journey up into the Rockies. (For other baseball fans, this marks the third place we got to see a baseball stadium-- I rode past both in Chicago and then Coors Field. If only there was time to stop and see a game...) This was arguably the most breathtaking part of our trip. We crept back and forth up the mountains and saw some of the most incredible American landscapes I have ever seen. My grandmother likes to ponder how exactly people made it out west without cars or trains, and I found myself wondering the same thing. We rode through a six-mile tunnel and ended up in Fraser, Colorado, which is a resort town. At Fraser, the conductor announced that there had been some kind of train crash up the track from us and that we would have to wait before we could clear it. It turned out that the freight crash was much worse than the conductor had originally realized-- there were six cars derailed and it was blocking up essentially the entire track (east and west bound). He announced that we would have to head back to Denver (two or so hours away from where we were) and that we would be bused to a train on the other side of the collision. Upon reaching the other side of the tunnel (after a brief stint of being stuck inside of it which was terrifying for the claustrophobe in me), our train stopped and proceeded to stay in the same spot for the next several hours. Ella and I weren't in a rush to get anywhere, really, so we relaxed and enjoyed the scenery and were surprised to see that a lot of people were doing the same. There were, of course, plenty of people who were using the train as a legitimate way to get from point A to point B in the time that Amtrak had specified, but the sightseeing car (where we spent just about all of our time) was filled with people who were similarly relaxed about the situation. This is probably one of the starkest contrasts between train and air travel that we noticed-- train travel takes so much longer and there is a more obvious lack of control by the conductors over things like accidents (Amtrak shares the rail with freight trains and the freights take priority), so people seem to be a little more relaxed about it. At any rate, we enjoyed our 12 hour excursion into the Rockies and back to Denver (it was colloquially referred to on the train as the "Train to Nowhere), and arrived in Denver at 8 PM to hop on a bus for a few hours. As we got off the train in Denver, our conductor announced, "Have a good night, everyone. I hope tomorrow is a better day." A pretty pathetic announcement, but we got a kick out of it.

We arrived in Glenwood Springs sometime close to midnight and boarded our new California Zephyr to continue our trip. After a terrible night of sleep in Nebraska, Ella and I made the executive decision to take Benadryl before bed, and I must admit that it was probably the best night of sleep I've had in weeks. We woke up feeling the train stop and looked out the window to see the most foreign-looking American landscape either of us had ever seen. We were in Sphynx, Utah, and it was beautiful desert. Upon first waking up, it looked to me as though I was suddenly transported back to Mongolia- other Americans in Mongolia had always told me that there were many parts of America reminiscent of Mongolia, but this was my first time seeing one. We were fortunate enough to be able to step outside of the train (we stopped there so we could get a new train crew) and felt as though we had stepped off the train and perhaps onto Mars.

We spent the day riding very slowly through Utah (there were signal problems all day), and arguably the best part of our delay was that we rode past Salt Lake during the day. Ella, the undeniable salt fiend of the two of us, spent the afternoon gawking at the mounds and mounds of salt. The big announcement of the day was that our train was so late by that point (fourteen hours or so) that it had to turn around to go back to Chicago in a last-ditch attempt to keep the rest of the California Zephyr trains somewhat on track. We got kicked off the train in Reno and concluded the first leg of our journey on an overnight bus to San Francisco. We rolled into SF around 4:30, finally, and showed up at Ella's friend's Maggie's apartment soon thereafter.

Overall, we had an amazing time. I have always known that the American landscape is quite varied, but until this I never had a chance to see it for myself, and it is truly a beautiful experience. We met a lot of really interesting people over the days on the train, participated in lots of train gossip and other things that come along with the same group of people being in an enclosed space with nothing to do for a few days, and had lots and lots of tea time. I'm glad we did it this way and despite all the delays, I wouldn't have rather traveled any other way. The train ride, while in length resembled the Trans-Siberian, was a completely different experience, though that's a topic I'll hold off on. If anyone's actually interested in my thoughts regarding that, feel free to e-mail me. For now, though, I hope everyone is doing well, don't forget to write, and I will write again soon!