On Monday I boarded a bus in Boston to take me to Albany in upstate New York, because they were doing trackwork on that stretch. We had some time to wait in Albany and then boarded the Lake Shore Limited, where I had my Very Own Cabin with a bed and everything (including a hidden toilet which was... a bit weird). The trip to Chicago was pretty uneventful, arriving before lunch on Tuesday, and I planned my four hours in Chicago, where I wanted to go and see Cloud Gate/the silver bean thing and go to the Federal Reserve museum which was close to the station. I thought about going up the Willis Tower (as one of my dinner mates told me, spelt 'W I L L I S, pronounced 'Sears') but it was a pretty cloudy day and I didn't know if I could squeeze it into my time.
My umbrella was somewhere deep in my suitcase (I think. I have not come across it yet...) and the rain prediction didn’t look too heavy, so I decided to take the risk with just my jacket and scarf. I walked the twenty-five minutes to Cloud Gate, dodging light and then heavier rain, taking pictures of famous plazas and buildings as I happened across them. I realised Chicago's bridges are the ones they use in one of the Dark Knight films, when they have to close all the bridges, so it was pretty cool to see those.
I took shelter from the rain in a bakery, enjoyed a cherry croissant thing and waited for it to clear. It did, a little, so I dashed across the road and into the park, admired the massive mirrored sculpture and took my pictures, then checked out two large pillars made of glass bricks with water cascading down them (sort of a reverse of the 9/11 memorial voids), a vividly-coloured projection of a moving, smiling, neutral, sorrowful face on each one, facing each other across a wide plaza.
I walked across the plaza to take some good photos, attempting to dodge the puddles (it was still raining), but realised the plaza was not a plaza but a shallow reflecting pool, and my shoes each acquired their own little squelchy internal swimming pool. The sculptures were pretty incredible, though.
On the way back to the Federal Reserve, it really started pouring. I had to take shelter in a few shop doorways as thunder rumbled overhead, but finally I made it, only to find the museum was closed until the next week. The guard gave me $364 for my trouble though, with was nice (it was shredded).
Back at Union Station (which has the most massive, beautiful waiting hall, by the way, like a European cathedral but brighter and more classical) I attempted to use the shower, but it was busy, so I sat and dried off some in the lounge and waited to board the next train, the California Zephyr.
A little before boarding time, we heard that they'd had to switch engines, so there would be a bit of a delay. We eventually boarded about an hour late, I settled in my cabin (no personal toilet this time), and we were on our way!
There was quite a bit of flooding along the way, and at times we were crawling along. When we crossed the Mississippi, the water was pouring around the bridge footings and we passed a rail yard where most of the tracks were under water. The track we were on looked like it could be under water as well, from my window on the upper floor, but I couldn't see any ripples in the water from the wheels so we must have been just a few inches above the surface.
We have a car attendant who stays with us all the way and puts our beds down and up, but the conductors change every so often. Some of them have a good sense of humour. Sometimes we'd pause for a little while at a station or in the middle of nowhere, and the conductor would come on and say something like 'No big deal everyone, just a little... mechanical thing'. At Denver on Wednesday (where we had time to wander around the station, which has a bookshop and a grocer and a hotel and bars and leather armchairs and is pretty cool), we were late leaving again because of traffic on the line, as well as a bit of maintenance - as the conductor said, ‘Our next mechanical isn't until Emeryville (a day and a half away), so we want to make sure we have as much fixed as possible before leaving'.
After Denver, we climbed up into the Rockies, taking long, sweeping curves back and forth up into the mountains. You can really see why they're called the Rockies - the soil is very rocky, the outcrops are huge and rocky, the peaks are enormous and rocky, bands of sedimentary rock tipped at steep angles. There was still snow on some of the mountains to the north, and we followed a river up past mountain towns and wilderness, steep cliffs and rushing rapids. Beautiful area.
Then we got to the Moffat Tunnel, which is the highest point Amtrak reaches anywhere in the US at 9249 feet above sea level, and a 6.2 mile long tunnel. The conductor told us there was 3000 feet of rock above us, probably the deepest on earth we'd ever be and the highest above sea level on land we'd ever be, and to watch out for cave trolls. We also crossed the continental divide here - the rivers, instead of running east, would now run west.
At the village just after the tunnel, the train stops in winter right near a ski lift, so according to the conductor you can "get right off the train and into your skis and get the chair lift about twenty feet away, and then you're free to ski or tumble down the mountain, whichever you prefer". Further commentary included some interesting rock formations, as well as "If you look out to the left and right of the car just now, you can see it's raining".
More incredible scenery, campers and people in boats along the smoother parts of the river. We crossed into Utah, which I knew because there was 'Utah Colorado' written on the rock face in white paint.Near 11 pm there was a medical emergency and they called for medical personnel onboard and we stopped a little while longer, but they managed to sort it out okay and we kept going. Today I got up earlyish (we're doing a sort of Martian day with 25 hours, where you put your watch back an hour every day) and went to sit in the lounge car with a coffee to watch Nevada go by through the huge windows. As I mentioned, it's quite green - my breakfast mate said he'd never seen it so green, and took a picture to prove it for posterity. It should be brown desert, but there's been a lot of rain across the whole continent it seems, and the desert has come to life. It reminds me a little of New Zealand's Central Volcanic Plateau, with the Desert Road, only far, far huger.
It got a little drier, and then we were right up in the mountains, with snow still settled in the dips, sometimes making icy bridges over little streams tumbling down the mountainside. There were a few more resort towns, then redwoods and pine trees along the sides of the ranges. I saw little monarch butterflies flitting about beside the tracks. Then out onto the flatter land, hills either side, and lots of water again. The last few stops, we ranged between 3.75 hours late and 3 hours late, crossed over a huge bridge just before Martinez and took the coast around into the Bay Area. The Golden Gate Bridge and San Francisco were hazy in the evening light across the water. And, at last, Emeryville!
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