Late, Late and Late

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Late, late and late... that has been our story for the last two days. We made it into Sonoma late last night. 1:00 a.m. to be precise. We were SUPPOSED to be in at 4:00 p.m. We made it to Sacramento at 10:00 p.m. That's just six hours late.

Let's go back to the re-cap of the momentous train trip. So my dad wanted to travel through the Rockies on the California Zephyr in December. I think, based on a fall trip with no potential weather issues, that I would NOT take a train trip through the mountains in December.

Our train originated in Chicago, left on time, and in less than one states travels it already fell behind 1.5 hours. Oh well, that's the trains in America, right? By the time it got to Denver (Might I also note, that we were on time, ready and waiting. We should have called early to check on the status!), it was almost three hours late. Okay, so that gets us to Sonoma by 7:00 p.m. Somehow, through the course of the trip, we experienced track problems, freight cars getting the right of the way, all the time, and other issues. The cumulative effect of those delays was six hours!

Anyway, I'm getting ahead of myself. When we left Denver, it was overcast and misting. Slightly disappointing, but I had high hopes that once we rose up into the mountains that we would get out of that weather, and indeed we did. Friday was a gorgeous sunny day, hardly a cloud in the sky. We meandered our way through the Rocky Mountains at a clip of 35 - 55 mph at times. Along the way we picked up the Colorado River and followed that throughout Colorado. It was so picturesque! We saw trout fisherman, kayakers, whitewater rafters and oh, Dorothy got to see breasts!

Breasts?!? How did I miss the breasts? I had decided to close my eyes just for a few minutes, I was a bit sleepy. I told her to wake me if she saw anything noteworthy. Well, I guess maybe breasts aren't all that interesting to Dorothy. I woke up and she told me all that she had seen many things, including the breasts. She motioned with her hands like she was cupping two large cantaloupes. They were LARGE breasts. She claims that there wouldn't have been time to wake me, I would have missed it anyway. Oh well.

Dorothy and I spent the day reveling in the beauty of the Rocky Mountains. The topography of that mountain range is beyond words. The cliffs above us sometimes climbed 1500 feet. They were layered with many colors and sediments. When the sun set on them they turned orange and pink and became images from a water color painting. Breathtaking.

In between watching the mountains and eating our three square meals a day provided by Amtrak, we found time to mingle with the passengers. There's something about traveling on a train that makes people want to talk. We met retirees from lead-you-by-the nose tours and young families with kids trying to keep them quiet and busy. All the people we met wanted to talk. Maybe that's one reason why my dad enjoyed trains. You always meet people who are excited to talk about their travels. Everyone has stories. Stories about where they came from, where they are going and where they plan to go. It's not like getting onto an airplane and creating that tunnel vision... "I hope I don't sit next to someone who stinks, I hope nobody bothers me while I read, can't they see that I am listening to my tunes on my i-pod. How dare they..." Generally on trains, people want to share.

That evening at dinner, we sat with a couple from one of the tour groups, America by Rail. Ron had shared with me his first night of sleeping in the bunk bed in the sleeper car. He equated it to sleeping in an MRI machine. "What? "Did I mention that I am claustrophobic? An MRI machine? I don't know if I can do this."

Dorothy and I called Roy, our train steward, to put down our beds (someone puts down our beds... nice!). Up to the MRI machine I went. After moments of feeling slightly queasy, I gave in to sleep... sleep that was so deep it was possibly like a fetus in a womb...

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