2006 Amtrak vacation

Where to stay, and some thoughts.

So I know where I’m going to be and when I’m supposed to be there and for how long. I need a place to sleep. I tried a new tool for some ideas. Google Earth. Incase you don’t know about it you can get it free at www.google.com and click on “more.” Look for “Earth,” click on it and follow the directions to download it. The free version works fine.

With Google Earth you can get a birds eye view of most major areas in the U.S. and many parts of the world. Google Earth also lets you turn on a “layer” that shows the location of hotels. Find the area you are interested in, zoom in, and start looking for hotels. There are no ratings or other information about the hotels on Google Earth but you can click the icon associated with the hotel and go to a web site for that hotel. I found that I could get an idea of what the neighborhood looked like. Did it have an industrial complex across the street or was it in a downtown area. I had the AAA Tourbooks for some of the locations and that listed several possible hotels. I also used the AAA web site. I didn’t use any of the popular web based services (Hotels.com, Expedia.com, etc…) because some of them won’t tell you where the hotel is until you put your money down to complete the booking process. I didn’t want to save $20.00 on a hotel only to spend $25.00 each way on a taxi. Some of the hotels have special rates if you make your reservation on the internet and pay in advance.

After searching and narrowing the possibilities down I started making the reservations. It was rather easy. It only took a few minutes for each hotel. The AAA discounts amounted to between 10% and about 35%.

As I’m writing this, it’s less than two weeks until we depart. I have received my tickets from Amtrak, I have the hotel reservations, and I have an idea of what we are going to do while we’re at most of the stops. Amtrak has been running late on the Sunset Limited and the Coast Starlight most of the dates that I checked. When I say late, I’m not talking 30 minutes or an hour. Some trains have been 14 and 16 hours late. The Sunset Limited is supposed to arrive at 10:10 AM. If it’s two or three hours late we’ll still have most of the day to enjoy LA but if it arrives at 10:10PM, we’ve lost a day. The Coast Starlight has really had problems this summer. It should arrive in Seattle at 8:30PM but if it’s twelve hours late, we’ve bought a hotel room that we won’t be able to use except for taking a shower and freshening up. We will have slept on the train that night. I’ve been tracking its arrival for about a month and the earliest arrival was only three and a half hours late. Amtrak called me about two weeks ago and told me that the departure time from Los Angeles had been move up one hour in an effort to improve the overall performance of the Coast Starlight. The schedule change was effective June 14th but it hasn’t helped much. It might be a few minutes earlier at Emeryville but it is still late by about an hour every day.

Stay tuned for updates.

Brass tacks time

I had a plan and I had the OK from Frances. Time to get down to brass tacks and nail this trip down but there were still some wrinkles that had to be ironed out. Eventually a call to 1-800-USA-RAIL and, well, you'll just have to read the rest of this. Click the link below for all the details.

It was time to try and nail down some dates. Frances had some in-service dates starting around June 12th or 13th but we didn’t know the exact dates. She also had to be back by the middle of August for the start of school. I had some commitments at church and with the Boy Scouts. I had thought about leaving as soon as school was out but our daughter put a stop to that when she said she and her husband would be going to Florida for a week in early June and we got to keep her dog. We didn’t mind doing it; it just eliminated some possible dates from our available time. After clearing as many obstacles as possible I had a window of opportunity between July 3rd and August 5th.

The next thing I had to consider was the “days of operation” for some of the trains. For example, the Cardinal leaves New York on Sunday, Wednesday, and Friday. That means it come through Cincinnati on Monday, Thursday, and Saturday on its way to Chicago. On the return trip it leaves Chicago on Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday. The Sunset Limited leaves New Orleans on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. All of the other trains operate daily. I used Excel to try out the different departure dates. It turns out that Saturday or Monday worked best. If I left on Thursday I would have to spend three nights in New Orleans before I could catch the Sunset Limited to Los Angeles and I didn’t want to do that. The rest of the trip was pretty much open to travel any day until we returned to Chicago. We needed to arrive in Chicago on Tuesday, Thursday, or Saturday to make a connection with the Cardinal. If we made the Thursday connection we would have six nights in hotels.

The next question would be how long to stay in each location. Chicago was just a connecting point and that would be about eight hours, no hotel to worry about. We could grab a lunch, go see some sights, do some shopping, and then have a nice evening meal before boarding the City of New Orleans for the overnight ride.

The first overnight stop would be New Orleans. We had to spend one night there. It was impossible to make same day connections there. Frances and I had been there several years ago but with the hurricane damage and associated problems, we didn’t really want to stay there more than one night. We would arrive around 3:00PM Sunday and leave just before noon on Monday. We would have time to see a few things that evening, enjoy a nice meal, and grab a breakfast or brunch before leaving town.

After two days on the Sunset Limited we would arrive in Los Angeles. Originally I had thought about three days here but since we would be stopping in the San Francisco Bay area for a day, I decided to limit our stay to just two days. We would (maybe I need to change that to “should”) arrive at 10:10 AM on Wednesday and leave at 10:15 AM on Friday.

Our next stop will be at Emeryville. Emeryville is one of the stations in Oakland. I chose it because I had been there before and I knew where there was a hotel and I knew how the local transportation connections worked. If the Coast Starlight was on time we would arrive at 10:02PM on Friday and then leave at 10:12PM on Saturday. Lately the Coast Starlight has been aptly called the “Starlate.” We would have a twenty-three and a half hour trip to Seattle.

Seattle would be another two night stop for us. We “should” arrive on Sunday evening if the Starlate is even close to on time. We’ll have all day Monday and then till mid afternoon on Tuesday to see what Seattle has to offer. The Empire Builder will be waiting for us on Tuesday afternoon for our return trip.

The Empire Builder usually runs a pretty good schedule and that’s good because we need to be in Chicago on Thursday to catch the Cardinal back to Cincinnati at 7:45PM. If everything is on time we would have three hours and fifty minutes to make the connection. I’m not sure what options we would have if the Empire Builder was late. I suspect Amtrak would hold the Cardinal for connecting passengers if the delay wasn’t too long.

So now I knew what dates we would be leaving and I knew when and where we would be stopping and for how long. So, back to AAA to let them book the trip for me. The agent I talked to this time was not quite as helpful as the agent I had talked to originally. He basically told me to call Amtrak, make the reservations and get some kind of number and bring that back to him and he would handle it from there.

I called Amtrak the next day. They have “Julie,” their automated agent that has voice recognition software. I had tried it once before for something simple but this time I had a fairly complicated order with two different types of discounts. I knew that sometimes when you get a human, things can get confusing but at least you can sort of talk naturally and work out the problems. Julie recognizes the word “agent” and will send you to a human if that’s what you want.

I talked to a very nice agent. I forgot her name but she was very helpful and she deserves a pat on the back. I described my planned trip and then we got to work booking each segment. She took the AAA and Veterans Advantage numbers and gave me a price of twelve hundred and some odd dollars. I questioned the price. She looked at something else and told me that I was right, the cost would be $771.75 and she apologized for the error. She said I qualified for the “Explore America” fare.

If you look at the Explore America info on the Amtrak web site it is a little confusing. It says you can make three stopovers along a route. I was actually making six stops on my trip. I’m not sure if the three stops an a route means three stopovers on the same train (IE: Sunset Limited originate at New Orleans with stops in Houston, El Paso, and Tucson and terminating in Los Angeles) or does it mean three stops between the origin and destination regardless of how many trains are involved. Whatever it means, the computer said I qualified and it let the agent enter the reservations.

We were just about finished. She needed some names and address info and the credit card number. Told me that since there was plenty of time before the trip, the tickets would be mailed out in about two weeks. She then checked to see if there was an baggage check at Cincinnati (there isn’t) and told me to bring a light blanket if I wanted to and Amtrak would supply the pillows.

Where can you go for $771.75

It's 2006 and I've talked Frances into going on a train trip this year. It started out as maybe an eight day trip with stops in two cities but it grew a bit larger. It turns out to be a real bargan at.... You can probably guess. Click below to read the rest of this entry.

It’s now 2006 and I’m ready for another “adventure.” I might be ready but Frances isn’t all that keen on taking a train trip. I often say she should have been named “Dorothy”, like the girl in “The Wizard of Oz.” She has often said as we neared the end of a vacation “There’s no place like home.” I new I had a job before me if we were going to take a trip this year.

A trip to the computer and www.amtrak.com and the little wheels in my head were turning. Let’s see. If I drive to Chicago again I could take the Southwest Chief to Los Angeles and back. I wonder how much would that be? I punched in the destinations and some dates and it came back with a basic fare of a little over four hundred dollars per person. OK. What if I added Emeryville in the mix and came back to Chicago on the California Zephyr? This time it was $441.00. What if I left from Cincinnati? We had thought about that for last year but it cost more and the timing wasn’t convenient. So how much for Cincinnati to Chicago, to Los Angles, to Emeryville, back to Chicago, and finally Cincinnati? I was surprised to see $441.00 again. This was looking pretty good to me. I checked some other options and found that I could start in Cincinnati and go just about anywhere out west and if I picked the most direct routes I could travel for $441.00. Then I got to thinking about how I could maximize my travel for the bucks. How about Cincinnati to New Orleans (via Chicago), then Los Angeles via the Sunset Limited, up to Seattle, and then back to Chicago and Cincinnati. Anything we looked at last year with the Sunset Limited ran our cost us quite a bit. So how much would this route cost? You guessed it, $441.00 per person. I got a little more specific and punched in our discounts. Frances can use the 10% AAA discount and I get 15% Veterans Advantage discount. With those discounts the rail fare for the two of us would be $771.75. Boy! I could see a whopper of a trip for our summer vacation but I still had to convince Dorothy, or make that Frances. I also knew that if we went on a trip like that we would have to stop at a few places to go “shopping.”

For the next month or two I kept dropping little hints. “Where you want to go for vacation this year?” “How would you like to go to California?” “We had such a great trip last year, you’d love it. Just sit back and enjoy the ride and the scenery as it goes by or you can sleep while we travel.” Even before that last line, she new I was really pushing for a train trip. Finally, she sort of indicated that she might be willing to do a trip like that.

“I’ll go one time but don’t expect me to do it again.” She said.

All right! I got the go ahead. She said we could do it! I better do this one right if I ever want a chance to get her to go again next year.

For the next few weeks I did some investigating. What kind of connections could we make? I didn’t want to have to transfer from train to bus in route. As a matter of fact, I didn’t want to take the bus anywhere. Amtrak has several “Thruway” bus connections as part of their service between some stations. I downloaded the current timetables for the Sunset Limited, The Southwest Chief, The California Zephyr, and The Empire Builder from the Amtrak web site. Except for the Sunset Limited, all of these train run between Chicago and the west coast. The Sunset Limited runs between New Orleans and Los Angeles (normally it runs to Orlando Florida but has been temporarily terminated in New Orleans until infrastructure that was damaged in the 2005 hurricanes can be restored.)

The Amtrak website only allows a multi-city trip with four segments. Cincinnati to New Orleans is one segment even though it involves two trains. I wanted to do a five segment trip. Could I go Cincinnati to New Orleans, then Los Angeles, Emeryville, Seattle, and back to Cincinnati for the same of slightly more? I went by the AAA office and ask one of their planners. She called Amtrak with my proposed itinerary and requested for a price quote. If you didn’t guess, the price with the extra stop was still $771.75.

Would I do it again"

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.

Day 7, Where's "Radar?"

If this is Ottumwa, Iowa, Corporal Radar O'Reilly must be somewhere around here. We were there but we didn't see him. Click below to see the rest of the story.

Good morning day seven. Not exactly sure where we are. I woke up a couple of time last night. I think I caught some kind of bug. My mouth and throat are dry and my nose is slightly stopped up. Not all that bad, just sort of a nuisance.

We were in either eastern Nebraska or western Iowa. Our next stop would be Creston Iowa. I think I remember waking up in Omaha. It may have been Lincoln. I woke up but I sure wasn’t awake. As the sun came up there was no doubt that we were in the flatlands. Unlike North Dakota and eastern Montana, there were patches of trees, corn fields, and other crops. The towns were closer together and more people doing more things. We arrived at Creston on time. Other than the “drug bust” of the first day and the fog of southern Oregon and northern California, we had been pretty much on time during our whole trip. We were hoping to continue with our on time success.

Ottumwa Iowa. This is the small town made famous as the home town of Corporal Radar O’Reilly in M*A*S*H. We arrived a few minutes early. The crew announced that it would be a smoke stop. Again, it was nice to step outside and stretch a little. We looked around but we never did see Radar, but, I guess we didn’t really expect to find him there.

We were still on time but that was about to end. It was either at Burlington or Mt Pleasant when things started running amuck. I had my scanner on so I had a pretty good idea of what was going on. The Burlington Northern Santa Fe (BNSF) had some damage with their signal and control equipment. Seems like there had been a lightning storm during the night and it had caused some damage. The dispatcher was unable to remotely control some of the switches and had lost the ability to monitor traffic in some locations. As we left the station we had to stop so that the engineer could align a switch for our train. After the end of the train passed that switch we had to stop again so that the conductor at the rear of the train could re-align the switch back to its normal position. This had to be repeated two or three more times. All dispatching had to be done by radio and it all took time. We would move a couple miles and stop before getting permission to continue. It didn’t take long for us to end up over an hour behind schedule. This was probably about the worst place to start running late. We were scheduled to arrive in about three hours and there was very little time and only two stops where we had any chance of making up any time. We would end up at Naperville over an hour late.

We knew that the Mennonite family would be getting off at Galesburg and we had had such a great time talking with them the day before. We walked back to their coach and shared a few more minutes with them and told them how we had had such a great time talking with them yesterday and we complemented them on their children’s behavior.

Our scheduled arrival time at Naperville was 1:47PM but we didn’t get there until about 3:00PM. We unloaded our baggage and moved it all to the other side of the station. My brother and I caught a cab back to the church where we had parked. The cabbie was one of those guys that thought he was the only one in town that had the right to be on the streets at that time. At the church I stopped in and thanked the guy that I had made the arrangements with then we were on our way to pick up Sonny and Kirk and our luggage. That cabbie that took us to the church must have tried taking a short cut that went bad for him. We took the main road back to the station and ran into much less traffic. We loaded everyone and everything into the car and we were on our way home. Time now was getting closer to 4:00PM and the afternoon rush was under way. We had wanted to miss that and if we had arrived on time in Naperville, we probably would have been ok. We ended up taking a detour that added a few miles to our trip but in the long run, it got us home a little quicker.

The rest of the trip was just a car ride. I had been through there several times and if anything needed to be mentioned here, it was mentioned when I described the trip to Chicagoland. A pit stop for gas and some KFC between Chicago and Indy and we’d be in Louisville by early morning.

Kirk's log, day six

This is my sixth day on the trip and I’m in Helper, Utah. Everywhere I look I see something beautiful. Here in Utah there are a lot of large mountains. But once we got into the state of Colorado the scenery was majestic. It got to be about 8:30 here, 10:30 Eastern, Dad called the “Joe B. and Denny Show”. We lost signal in the desert a few times. He told Joe B we were on the Amtrak in Utah. He said we went through Idaho and ask where Denny’s place was to fish. Joe was going to tell Dad but they went to a break. We’ve seen the desert and mirages that look like water but are just sand. The desert turned into mountains. We also followed the Colorado River 300 miles from Grand Junction to Frazier, Winter Park, Colorado. In between we passed over the Continental divide. We stopped at Glenwood Springs. Dad said you would love this place. Tackett was glad he had seen the grave of Doc Holliday. Doc and the Orphice Meister had the same conditions. At winter Park it is know as the ice box because of its 50 and below temps. Then we also went through a six-mile tunnel called Moffitt. In the club car one wire is always finding fresh meat. There were gorges that were breathtaking with white rapid water. We saw 2 eagles, rafters, and fly fishermen. There was a special ed teacher who helping a 7th grade girl with division. One wire joined in with the math lessons. Who else did we meet. A woman pilot, a biologist who has a paper due tomorrow on sage genetics, a Rick Majeras look-a-like, a Mennonite family. That’s all for now. John’s going to the show, “Racing Stripes.”

Day six, Utah and Colorado

Day six starts in Utah and takes us through Colorado. click below to see the details. There's pictures this time.

If this is day six then we must be in Utah. The sun had not come up yet but there was enough light to get a general idea of what we were passing. I looked at my watch and the timetable and discovered that if we were on time, we probably had just departed Salt Lake City, Utah. We had been running a little behind schedule when I went to sleep last night. I turned on the GPS to see where we actually were, I found that we had made up the time and were just about on time again.

Allow me to take a slight detour here. If you go to the library or a book store you can find several books about some of the train that Amtrak runs. In 1994 I was working the evening shift quite often and one of the other guys used to listen to NPR and often left the radio on when he went home. We were usually too busy to worry about changing the station or even turning the thing off. Dick Estell, the “Radio Reader” was reading the book “Zephyr”, by Henry Kisor (ISBN 0-8129-1984-X). I wasn’t able to listen every evening but from time to time I got to hear parts of the book. I heard enough of it that I wanted to read it. It’s a great book that goes into some of the behind the scenes things that the public never sees. You have to go through three chapters before you ever board the train. He talks about the people and places you might see or meet on a Zephyr trip. We ask our crew if they knew any of the people mentioned in the book. A few were known to some of our crew but none were on our train. When we arrived in Glenwood Springs we think we saw Sandi Brown who’s photo was in the book.

The book is still available if you search the internet with the ISBN number. The reading is easy and even though it has a lot of background material, it’s not a highly technical book with engine specifications, etc… My brother who’s not a “train nut” like me said he really enjoyed it and it gave him some ideas of things to look for as we traveled.

Now, back to day six. As the sun came up we found our self in some fairly flat terrain with some hills in the distance. Several times I tried to imagine what it must have been like for the pioneers as they traveled through the area a hundred and fifty years earlier. I imagined that it was quite hot in the summer and brutally cold in the winter. There were no trees anywhere. The prairie was flat for the most part but every now and then there would be a “canyon.” Well, not really a canyon but a formidable obstacle if you were dragging a wagon. These canyons were maybe ten to twenty feet deep with near vertical walls about a half of their depth. They were about as wide as they were deep. They were the result of erosion. They would go as far as I could see. Pioneers on horseback could probably find a suitable place to cross nearby but those with wagons probably had to go miles to find a crossing point.

It wasn’t too long until we began seeing rock formations like we had never seen before. They were red and orange. Then there was the occasional river that we would cross or parallel for awhile. The land was mostly barren except for some green near the rivers. The hill sides looked like something that had been excavated recently.

Somewhere along the way a family of Quakers boarded our train, I don’t remember where it was. At least we thought they were Quakers. It was a young couple with her parents and three children. The ladies wore long skirts and a cap typical of Quakers. The men had beards and they all dressed in solid colors. As I said, we thought they were Quakers but we noticed that both of the men had cell phone. Sonny asks them about it. Turns out they were Mennonites. They embrace modern technologies but still cling to a lot of their traditional values. They were traveling to Illinois for a wedding. The children were probably between four and seven and were very well behaved and the daughter was cute as a button. We talked with the young man off and on most of the day. They were very interesting and he had a Dutch accent. He did concrete and construction work.

As morning grew old we got into the western foot hills of the Rockies. We were still on time. We arrived in Grand Junction around 10:45AM. Things were starting to turn green. We were scheduled to arrive in Glenwood Springs at 12:30PM and we were expecting another very scenic trip from that point. We were not disappointed. Near Glenwood Springs we came along side the Colorado River. For the next six hours we would travel through some of the most beautiful country in the west. We would be paralleling the river to the continental divide. As we left Glenwood Springs, I-70 was just across the river from us. This was the last stretch of the highway to be completed. There was quite a bit of controversy about building the highway along the river. The environmentalist said it would ruin the beauty of the river. It turned out to be a beautiful solution. The westbound lanes are terraced above the eastbound lanes. You need to see it to appreciate it. As we continued we saw rafters, fishermen, and kayakers but no swimmers. The water was probably a bit nippy for that. After about a half hour of taking photos I decided to just put the camera down and enjoy the view. I could have taken hundreds of pictures between Glenwood Springs and Denver but I didn’t want to see them all through the viewfinder of a camera.

At 4:10PM we reached Frasier-Winter Park. This was the last stop before we crossed the continental divide. It was about sixty-two miles to Denver but the trip would take two hours and forty-eight minutes.

From Winter Park we would have to climb to the highest elevation along the route. Then we would cross under the continental divide via the Moffett Tunnel. The tunnel is six miles long. Before entering the tunnel the train crew made an announcement and asks passengers to refrain from walking between coaches while the train was in the tunnel. It was a way to reduce the amount of diesel fumes entering the coaches. It took about 15 minutes to travel portal to portal. From this point on we would be going downhill to Denver.

You might be wondering about why it takes so long to travel slightly over sixty miles. The route was very curvy and we were going downhill, so I’m sure that for safety reasons, speed was limited. The scenery was still excellent. When we finally neared Denver we were still a thousand feet above the level of the city. The tracks zigzag back and forth across the hillside to get to the bottom.

Denver’s station is a type that Amtrak dislikes. We came in towards the station from the northwest. The train had to go through a wye and then back into the station. Amtrak dislikes having to make this extra movement since it requires so much extra time. Once we got there we had bout twenty-five minutes to get out and stretch, walk around, and pick up some snacks or drinks in the station.

After departing Denver it wouldn’t be long before sunset. Day six was nearing an end for me. I don’t remember where we were or what time it was but sleep would not be an elusive thing this evening. It had been a beautiful day.

Kirk's log, Day five

Day Five.
We woke up today and ate at Denny’s then caught the California Zephyr. We went though snow capped mountains, through Donner’s Pass and lake. We’re in a desert now. We’ll write more tomorrow as I’ll be sleeping in Nevada.

To Winnemucca and beyond

Our return trip began today. The first part was a rerun of yesterdays trip between Sacramento and Emeryville. There was alot to see before we got to Winnemucca.

Day Five. It felt good to get a good nights sleep in a bed, but we had a train to catch this morning. We all got our batteries charged during the night, in more ways than one. Cell phone, camera, scanner, and GPS batteries were all fresh also. We had had pretty good success on the trains so far with finding outlets in the coach or the observation car for charging these devices but we didn’t know if we would be as lucky on the return trip. We took turns shaving while the others were packing up. Kirk doesn’t have any of those chin whiskers yet. He had a few extra minutes to pack.

We had spotted a Denny’s about a half block down the street from the hotel. That seemed like the best place in the neighborhood for breakfast. We all got a pretty big breakfast, anticipating the next few days. The only thing that would have been better would have been a place with a breakfast bar where we could have really “loaded up” for the road.

Back to the hotel, pick up our bags and off to the station. Our train was pulling into the station just as we arrived. Emeryville is the western terminus and origin for the California Zephyr. The platform was full of people waiting to board the train and an Amtrak Thruway bus was arriving. We positioned ourselves so that we could board fairly quickly. We wanted to get four seats together and we wanted to be near one of the electrical outlets. We had discovered that there were four outlets on each coach, two on each side and roughly half way between the stairway and the ends of the coach. I suspect they are available for medical devices. It’s a shame that there are not more outlets available since so many people travel with electronic devices these days.

About ten minutes after we boarded we were under way. Next stop for us, Naperville, Il. Our route would take us back to Sacramento over the same route we had been on yesterday. At Sacramento we would branch off to the east.

Shortly after departing Sacramento, I made my way to the observation car. DJ followed a few minutes later. At Sacramento, two guides boarded the train. One was a retired police officer and the other had been a school teacher. They were volunteers from the California State Railway Museum and they would be making announcements along the route pointing out historic or other interesting locations we would be passing. I met a family in the observation car that was traveling from Sacramento to their home in Truckee. They said they take the train once or twice a year to visit the parents and grandparents. The kids were six of seven years old and they enjoyed the trip. The mother told me that I needed to be sitting on a particular side of the train as it went through one area because the view was spectacular there. She was right, but the view was really nice on either side of the train. We passed through Donner Pass and some really winding tracks. Even though it was the first of June we still saw some snow on the ground in some of the higher areas. We stopped or went through some small towns and many of them resembled old western town. The buildings were wooden structures that had the flat fronts that were squared off on the top. The buildings and were built right on the walkway. Some of them really reminded me of the old westerns but the dirt streets and the horses had been replaced with asphalt and cars. Our stop in Truckee was only a few minutes but it gave me time to gander at the place a little. It’s pretty obvious that they get a good share of snow. The fire hydrants, some driveways and corner curbs had small white poles with red or orange tips on them to mark them so they could be found in the snow. The family I was talking to told me that many of the homes have second floor doors so that they can get in and out of the house when they get a really big snow.

As the afternoon stretched out, so did the slopes we were going through. By the time we got to Reno Nevada, things were becoming pretty flat. There were some large hills that sort of stood there alone. Often, if they were near a town, they would have some contrasting stones on the hill side with the first letter of the town facing the town and the railroad. I can’t imagine the work that it took someone to do that work. These hills might be a mile away and I would estimate that some of the letters would be three to five hundred feet from top to bottom.

As the sun started to sink towards the horizon we arrived in Winnemucca Nevada. The station was one of the most unique we had seen. It wasn’t glamorous or a unique design. It was simply a three sided shelter, the kind you would expect to see at a bus stop, complete with Plexiglas all around and some stick on letters that said “Amtrak Station” and “Winnemucca, Nevada.” I sort of wondered why Amtrak stops here and speeds through some larger towns.

Things really got flat after Winnemucca. There was a highway just north of us part of the time. You could look in any directions and not see anything other than an occasional road or fence line. “Probably not a good place to try to make a call home,” I thought. Looked at the cell phone and five bars were showing. Then you look around again and wonder, “Where in the world is the signal coming from?” We had better service here than we did in some small towns in Montana. I use Cingular for my carrier and their coverage maps show coverage over most of the country but there are several bare spots in the Dakotas, Montana, Wyoming, and Nevada, but there is a corridor through Nevada that does have continuous service. That corridor is along I-80 and that’s the highway I could see to our north.

The sun was setting and it wouldn’t be too long until my eyelids would be doing the same. It had been a scenic day. Could tomorrow compare?

Kirk's log, Day four

Had a rough night of sleep with a lot of maneuvering in an uncomfortable seat. Woke up in Chico, California. This is the fourth day of our trip. Woke up and saw rice fields, almond trees, and a lot of agriculture for miles. We arrived in Davis and there was Navy ships in the harbor. They were there Dad said in storage or mothballs. We were two hours late but finally got to San Francisco. We walked to our hotel and dropped our bags off. Then took the shuttle to the subway and took the subway to San Francisco, under the harbor to where the cable cars sat. Cable car line was 1½ hours wait. Betty Tackett wanted a gift from Chinatown. So we started walking where a lot of hills were. We took a vote to ride the bus, but nobody knew what bus to catch. So Tackett being a bus driver said we should as we had been sitting for 3 days. One wire gadget man ask the police where the cable cars were Mr. Gadget Man then proceeded to have a conversation with SFP. Tackett’s theory is one wire would talk to anybody, your Dad’s theory is Mr. Gadget cannot talk at home. We walked up and down one large hill were Chinatown stood. Tackett was glad because he found Betty’s piece of heaven. He must have went into 100 places. There were a lot of people from all over the U.S. When we went to look for a place to eat, A china man came up to Tackett and couldn’t speak English. He asked Dad if that was his brother-in-law. All he knew how to say was “I”. He handed us a piece of paper with a menu were we ate. We went up a hill and to a basement. We all at Chinese. I had BBQ Pork Fried Rice. After eating we started walking to Fisherman’s Wharf and Pier 39. There was a lot of people there because it was Memorial Day weekend. There was live music, people selling everything on the street. We walked along the pier and saw a seal in the water. We turned the corner and there lied 100 seals on wooden rafts. Dad was able to see what he wanted to see, the Golden Gate Bridge. We saw Alcatraz on a hill in the water. Dad said no one had ever escaped from there. We were walking and dad found a three card monty game. Dad and Tackett were reminded of there day at the Derby. He was always positive he could find the pea under the bottle cap. A guy was selling pictures. Dad saw the bikes you could ride across the Golden Gate but didn’t do it. John said he shouldn’t do it because he couldn’t find his way back. He would have had to ride the bike 10 miles. There are people on every corner playing music, drawings or selling an item. On man was playing the violin so good John gave him a dollar. We walked to the cable-car line and wait was an hour long. So we stood in line and waited. There was a man playing a guitar and asking for a request. We told him it was Dad’s birthday and everybody sang happy birthday to Dad. Finally we got on the cable car. We had to stand up, it was rough and bumpy. We stopped on Knob Hill, there was a street called Lombard street. The street was shaped like a zig zag with hedges out. Cars moved slowly on the street. We got to the end of the cable car route then took BART to McArthur Station. Then we took a city bus back to the room. Finally I was able to take a shower. I was then able to change my draws and sleep in a bed with clean sheets and a good mattress. I had to sleep with Tackett again. Dad and One Wire wanted to be able to sleep together like the Avery St. days. They remembered when there Dad would rent out the rooms to Uncle Joe and George his other uncle who came in for the Derby. I forgot another thing, there was a guy on the street with bushes that scared everybody with them for money.

Day 4, San Francisco

Day 4 was our "tourist" day. We enjoyed walking around San Francisco, but this entry talks more about getting there and back. Click below to see the entire posting.

Day four and we’re somewhere between Chico and Sacramento California. It’s about 6:30AM and we’re still about an hour behind schedule. We actually made up some of the time that we lost yesterday while going through the fog. I don’t remember the exact details but we were well over an hour late when I went to sleep last night.

Scenery is different today. Lots of agriculture along the way today… some vineyards, rice paddies, and other crops. For the most part, it’s about as flat as North Dakota on the right hand side of the train (the west side,) and there are some mountains in the distance on the other side. We’re moving along pretty good, staying right at 80 MPH. We should be able to make up a few more minutes before we get to Emeryville. I grabbed a cup I had with me, found my immersion heater and some oatmeal packets and went to the observation car and fixed some instant oatmeal for breakfast. It was still early. The other guys were still sleeping. There were only a few people in the observation car when I got there. That hot oatmeal tasted pretty good this morning. As a matter of fact, it was so good I fixed a second cup of it. Dennis and Kirk joined me about the time I finished the second cup of oatmeal. Kirk started off with some Pop-tarts. That boy is a real eating machine. He had to go downstairs (the sales area is in the lower level of the observation car) and pick up some additional donuts for his breakfast.

We arrived at Sacramento and we’re still about an hour late. Any time we had made up in the previous hour was lost again at Sacramento. The stop was not announced as a smoke break. As a matter of fact, I don’t think any of the stops we mad that morning were designated smoke stops. There must have been some problem with something or somebody because we were there several minutes longer than most stops. Eventually, we got underway again. Next stop, Davis. The depot at Davis was very characteristic of building from the era when California was settled. It resembled the Mexican style architecture. We continued south west along our route, speeding through a few small or medium towns. We noticed some ships on the left side of the train. As we got closer someone told us that it was the West Coast Mothball Fleet. We could tell that they were Navy ships. There must have been over fifty large ships and a bunch of smaller craft. A few minutes later we would be in Martinez, California. Martinez was the hometown of the “Yankee Clipper,” Joe DiMaggio. The street right next to the railroad depot was Joe DiMaggio Drive. We didn’t linger long. The next and final stop for us would be Emeryville, only 28 miles from Martinez. Almost immediately after pulling out of the station we were next to the channel that leads to the lake where the mothball fleet was. I had pretty much packed all of my stuff away and was ready for our arrival. I’m glad I had put everything away early because this segment was one of the nicest parts of the trip this morning. We traveled right next to the shore line and there was always something interesting around the next curve. The Bay Bridge, Golden Gate Bridge, and San Francisco were just some of the sights. But finally we reach Emeryville. We’re a little over an hour late. The Emeryville station was the most modern that we encountered on our entire trip. It was about four year old. Compare that to some of the stations that were over a hundred years old. We picked up or baggage and departed the train. It felt good to stretch a little. We went into the terminal and ask one of the agents for directions to our hotel.