Portland was the first time we were really late on the Amtrak. We were just almost to the Portland Amtrak Station, and the train stopped. Somehow they couldn’t get clearance to cross the last bridge that we needed to cross, so there we sat. This is of course after I had called Flora, our Portland […]
Eugene was one of the first stops where we made arrangements to meet total strangers and had hoped that it would go well. Zac found a club in Eugene called “Accordions Anonymous” and he contacted the head lady, Queen Accordiana, and she responded positively to our plea! We offered to play for them, and they […]
Klamath Falls It was too bad that I was so exhausted coming out of San Franny, because the morning views coming into Klamath were Awesome. I saw a few as I nodded in and out of sleep, but mostly just registered enough to know that I was missing some killer vistas. We hauled off the […]
Here is a lesson from Sacramento: if you take your downtown area, and ramp down all the sidewalks at the curbs so everything is ADA compliant, and block off car traffic so the light rail can run, and zone to encourage mixed high density commercial and residential development, and put some rent control in place […]
In order to take the California Zephyr Amtrak line, we had to take a side trip. It didn’t make much sense, but the California Zephyr originates in Emeryville, CA and ends in Chicago. We weren’t planning to go east (yet), but you could take the train from Emeryville to Sacramento, and then head north, and […]
Chicken John is another weird story. We met Chicken John the year we lived in the Clark (our 1964 motorhome that was our wedding present-part of our extended honeymoon). We got into San Francisco knowing not one soul, and got directions to a junkyard that might have the part we thought we needed to “fix” […]
The San Francisco Bay are was a real pain to get in and out of on Amtrak. Oakland has about 3 stations, but if you want to get into San Francisco, you have to take a bus. The bus is considered an extra segment on our 18 segment trip, so we had to get to […]
The Salinas Valley was amazing. Miles of it. For most of the day out of San Luis Obispo, after we crested some mountains and went across an Air Force base with big rockets (missiles?) loaded up on launch pads and descended back into the valley, we drove by food. It was the produce isle in […]
Talk about one pretty train ride. Going out of L.A. the train went through La La Land, just on and on, and then the west side of the train becomes prime ocean viewing seating. The train tracks were nestled between the Pacific Ocean, and Highway 1. As I thought of how everyone knows that California […]
San Luis Obispo is a great little town. We were staying with Ginnie and Essie, two girls that Cheryl used to baby-sit way back when she worked at summer camp, who are now young women sharing an apartment in town. They met us at the station, and walked us back to their place. They caught […]