A Western Trip
There never was a time when the heading for our columns was more true. Truly we have been traveling the Back Roads. Our son, Robert, and his family took us to the less traveled parts of Northern California and to some of the most famous places, too.
Hoping for a trip on Amtrak’s California Zephyr, we made reservations in May for a sleeper compartment from Chicago to Sacramento and a coach from Ann Arbor. We held our breath while Congress debated giving Amtrak enough money to continue to operate. If Amtrak had shut down, it would be the first time in 133 years that travelers could not cross the United States by rail. We count ourselves fortunate that we could sit in our compartment on August 1st, play Scrabble, and watch the varied landscape roll by. We even took short naps after lunch on the couch that made into a bed. One of the great things about riding the trains is mealtime. Each meal we were seated across from a different couple. Our dinner companions the first night were a couple from New York City. She taught school and he worked for Amtrak in the station and had been given a free train ride to San Francisco for 20 years of service. Many of the others were traveling to visit their families.
A couple who boarded the train on the first stop out of Chicago were celebrating their 20th wedding anniversary with a trip to San Francisco. They planned a short stay because they had left their 60 cow dairy herd in charge of their oldest son, who was 17. At another meal we met a father who was traveling with his ten year old son to Denver because it was a family tradition to celebrate each child’s tenth birthday by taking a trip with his father. One elderly woman was traveling by herself on a 30 day pass. She had visited relatives in Seattle, California, New Orleans, and New Mexico and now she was heading home to North Carolina.
In Illinois and eastern Iowa the farms were green and lush, then,
as we rolled onward across prairies, the crops were grown only with irrigation,
then there was just enough rainfall to support sparse brown grass for a
few cattle. Eastern Colorado was flat and brown, the Rockies appeared in
the distance and we rolled into Denver for a half an hour layover. We began
snaking our way up the Rockies, reaching an altitude of 9,000 feet. We
traveled through a 6 mile tunnel which was blasted through the Continental
Divide in the 1920s. We came out in bright sunshine and spectacular mountains
on the left. On the right was the Colorado River which runs along side
the tracks for 240 miles. Some sedimentary rocks were heaved up almost
vertically reminding us that these mountains were once at the bottom of
a sea billions of years ago. For the next four hours the scenery is breath-taking,
we watched rafters maneuvering through whitewater rapids, and fishermen.
Many passengers flocked to the curved windows of the observatio
n car to see the snow covered peaks of the Sierra Nevada mountains.
Amtrak trains are often late and our train was no exception. It pulled into the Sacramento station about an hour late. One reason they are late is that the freight lines own the tracks and passenger trains must lay over for them.
After a day’s rest we traveled with our son, his family and our grandson’s girl friend to Burney Falls. This lovely high waterfall was located in northern California near a national forest. The water was so clean and pure that several trout fishermen were trying their luck down stream.
For many miles we traveled through the national forest surrounded by tall ponderosa pines and Douglas fir . The road became a one lane gravel road. A strange sight greeted us when we came out of the forest, barren lava beds. For miles, rough, black hunks of lava covered the ground. We were surrounded at a distance by volcanic cones. Our destination was a lonely ranger station in the midst of this moon scene. There was a full schedule of interpretive tours, but we were running low on gas and traveled on just across the border into Oregon. There we had a delicious lunch and found gas at about forty cents a gallon cheaper than in California. There was no self serve. Oregon law requires that attendants fill your car and clean your windshield.
The next stop was snow-covered Mount Shasta at 14,162 feet. It is the third highest peak in the North American continent, after Mount Whitney also in California and Mount McKinley in Alaska. It is almost cone shaped. Cold mountain streams flow down its sides making for excellent trout fishing. Percy and Robert went out early the next morning and caught enough trout for everyone for supper. We drove up the mountain to around 7,000 feet and our grandchildren were intent on hiking to the snow line so they could make a snow ball. We adults had some anxious moments when the fog started rolling in and it was beginning to get dark. The kids weren’t anxious at all.
In the second part of our journey, Sherri, our granddaughter from Ohio, and her friend, Jessie, had arrived and traveled with us to Yosemite National Park, one of the most majestic spots on earth. Half Dome, a stark, smooth granite rock rises one vertical mile out of the valley. Every year for decades a 75 year-old man climbs the back side of the rock, pulling himself up the last 900 feet by cable to the summit. Waterfalls abound especially in the spring. The traffic is nicely managed by shuttle busses so there are no traffic jams.
From there we traveled through the forests surrounding Yosemite down winding roads with steep slopes to Bishop in a dry, brown eastern valley. Our destination was a 10,000 ft. mountain where bristle cone pines are found and Percy will tell you about them and other adventures in the next article.
– Mary