Sunday July 19/Monday July 20 (Emeryville to Glenwood Springs)

Sunday

I managed a reasonable night's sleep and it was another lovely day as i made my way to the Amtrak station. 

Well, Amtrak continues to find creative ways for their trains to run late, lol! We were only ten minutes late when we left Emeryville but by the time we left Sacramento, we were over an hour late. The wait of almost an hour was due to a problem with a passenger. The sliding door on her sleeper would not lock and she "lost it"! It took them a long time to settle her down, she was not put off the train. 

We then lost electrical power to the train so we stopped again, just out of Auburn, so they could re-configure how the engines ran in order to get power back!! Yay, it worked! At least it is generally a beautiful day outside so plenty can be seen. We travelled for some time through the Sierra Nevada range and briefly spotted the American River about 1800 feet below us. This river was partly responsible for the Californian Gold Rush and still has active mines.

We travelled through Emigrant gap, where the early settlers had to take their wagons apart and lower everything and themselves down by rope and tackle to Bear Creek below. 

Some of the sights: Yuba Pass, climbed Donner Pass, the old railway track with a snow shed, Lake Donner (where 39 people died out of a party of 87 that were stranded for five months) and then followed the railway on its full 360 degree turn, half to travel westward and then the horseshoe bend to travel back to the east.

 Well we are an hour and a half late into Truckee, I am getting used to Amtrak!! The Amtrak people working on the train have had their work cut out on this trip. 

As well as the three incidents there are a lot of young kids on the train and they have been constantly passing back and forth through the dining car and causing a bit of stress to the servers. There are people from England and Australia on the trip so it it an International group, lol! 

Spent time chatting to the two Aussie guys in the Observation car and had asked if I could join the English couple (from Devon) and their daughter for dinner. Jill, Dave and Megan. I had lovely seared salmon for dinner and we had a good chat. Very nice family. They are going on to Chicago, New York, Cape Cod and Boston.

We saw most of the sunset at Winnemucca, NV, although if we had been on time it would have been better. Some of the crew change here and it is a service stop. 

We had just resumed the trip and were travelling along nicely when we suddenly braked, fairly smooth but certainly a hard one. We came to a stop!! Then the voice came over, we had hit a deer and it had caused some of the brake linkages to come off on one of the cars. Poor deer, but this is just that time of night. This will, of course, mean we will run even later, but, what a trip, with so many different things happening!

Monday

I had some sleep early in the night and then fell asleep later only to be woken up by next door's wake up call!!

I wandered up for breakfast and then back to the room to get everything packed away and try and catch a few more zzzz's. We had another stop for more work on an engine so we were running nearly two hours late.

The landscape through Utah consists of large areas of scrub land with hills on both sides. These are the harder rock that was left behind after weathering and there are some incredible shapes that have been formed.

We finally came alongside the Colorado River and the scenery changed markedly. The scrubby land that we had followed for so long gave way to green, lush pastures surrounded by high hills. The land looked very different from the last time I came this way when it was April and only just out of winter.

We passed through many beautiful canyons that have been carved out by the river, wind and rain. The colouring is beautiful and there are so many different shapes formed from the hard rock. We also saw many people rafting and kayaking down the river and only one idiot decided to be funny!!!

We stopped at Grand Junction and the old railway station, which is a historic building, is up for sale, anyone want to buy it, lol???

We finally arrived at Glenwood Springs, two hours and five minutes late) so I farewelled the people I had met and hopped off. 

I was surprised to see most of the passengers also getting off but there was track work ahead so the Conductors had decided to give people 45 minutes to wander round.

I went off in the wrong direction but ended up catching the cheap "Ride Glenwood" bus. As it turns out, it is free for Seniors!! I found the motel and unfortunately it has a few shortcomings which is a pity, still only three nights! I will not be giving it a good write up anywhere though.

I then caught the bus to the other end of the town to buy some necessities at Walmart. The low light was that they did not have any plain sparkling water so I will have to try other places tomorrow. The weather had clouded up and there was some rain but it did not last for that long.

It took me a while to sort things out but I was finally able to shower and have some dinner. After writing the blog it was off to bed in the hope that I get a good night's sleep.