Riding the Rails

 I arrived in Boston to a downpour - no drought here! For the past hour or so, I was reminding myself that I shouldn’t forget to retrieve my checked backpack, which I hadn’t seen since Emeryville. I did have a baggage claim tag stapled to my ticket that very plainly said “Checked through to South Station, Boston.” Glitch time! Semi-drenched getting from the train to the station, I looked around for Baggage Claim - no signs of it, not a good omen. I went in to the Ticket Office. The Amtrak employee seemed baffled - “Where did they put the baggage claim office? Everything is moved around.” The station is being remodeled. She called a Red Cap. He took me back to a little room near the train (slosh, slosh) and showed me an empty cart, indicating that no bags had arrived on my train. Hmm. He advised calling the 800 number in the morning. Ok. I had stuff I needed for Boston, but my backpack had my cool, new toolbelt and lots of work clothes that I would need.

 We rolled through Western Massachusetts - a very pretty section, somewhat like southern Iowa without as many cornfields. The woods were hillier and had rivers with small waterfalls on them. The general impression was similar to Vermont without mountains.

 I had about five hours to kill in Chicago, so I walked to the river and watched the Friday evening party crowd float by. My diet had so far consisted of food brought from home, but while in Chicago I couldn’t resist a slice of deep-dish pizza. Luckily, there was a pizza place a block from Union Station. Very tasty! Lake Michigan was too dark to really see at 9:30pm, but I was pretty sure it was out there. For some unknown reason (perhaps it was partially a dream), we stopped for hours in Toledo. I do remember glancing out the window when we stopped next in Sandusky, but in the middle of the night, Cedar Point is pretty dark. We once camped in Sandusky and complained about the train noise. Now I know where it came from. There were other glimpses of Lake Erie, especially at the eastern edge, but I don’t think we got that close to Lake Ontario. I was reading a 1000-page book (actually a trilogy), and it was getting interesting. I finished the first book as we neared Boston.  Whe...

 Leaving Denver I saw lightning in the distance, to the Southeast. There was no thunder because the train is very well insulated, but the lightning did light up a good portion of the sky. I slept soundly through the rest of Colorado and all of Nebraska, waking up south of Omaha. I have driven those plains several times and have wanted to doze off - I finally got my chance. Much more relaxing than fighting off sleep for miles and miles.  I wasn’t expecting much from southern Iowa, but I was pleasantly surprised. The train didn’t parallel a freeway in this section. For many miles, it wasn’t apparent that any road was nearby. We passed through rolling, wooded hills and fields of corn and soybeans with little farming communities interspersed along the route. In eastern Iowa, I started to see towns with abandoned remnants of industries past. Eventually, we stopped in Burlington, Iowa. For railroad fans, this is an important town. It’s the B in CB&Q and it’s also the B in BNSF....

  From Salt Lake City, the route turned southeast, roughly paralleling US 6 until we got to the Colorado River and Interstate 70. This section included narrow canyons, where the road and the tracks squeezed on either side of the river with a high plateau and dramatic cliffs and mesas in the distance.  When we got to the Colorado River, the scenery was even more spectacular. Gorges with high, sheer walls cut by the river forced the train to go through tunnels at times and the freeway to be split into two levels. The mountains earned their name -  lots of rocks all along the route, looking like they had just been piled up the two sides of the river. We paralleled the river for hours, seeing lots of rafting/kayaking activity. The freeway headed east while the train turned north and continued to follow the river. Eventually, we came through a very long tunnel to the eastern slope of the mountains, which was very green and covered with pine forests. It was raining below us wit...

  This section is short for two reasons – first, shortly after Reno, it started to get dark outside and difficult to see anything and second, well, it is the desert. We did pass through a seasonal rain shower – very brief and light. Oh, there is a third reason that this section is short. From a couple hours outside Reno to Salt Lake City, I was asleep in the observation car.