WOW! What a trip. Over five thousand miles in seven days. We went through fourteen states by rail, sixteen if you include the driving. It was my first time in eleven of those states. We met some great people and we encountered some real characters. We didn’t go for the destination, we went for the trip. The scenery was great. I didn’t mention it earlier but we saw some bald eagles and some other wildlife that we don’t see around Kentucky. The hills of eastern Kentucky are beautiful but the size of the hills and mountains made the Rockies and the Sierra Nevada’s a totally different experience. The ride was great and the Amtrak employees were pretty nice.
I took over 300 digital photos while on this trip. Some had reflections of the windows and didn’t turn out very good but I expected that. That was one of the reasons I took so many photos. I tried to shield the reflections and sometime I succeeded and sometimes I failed. It took me about two days to go through the photos and choose the one I wanted and then tweak them.
Over all, it was a really great trip. Would I do it again? Just keep reading because the 2006 trip is coming up shortly.