#4, Mountains, High Deserts, and Salt Flats

 February 12 & 13, 2022

 After climbing aboard the California Zephyr in Sacramento, I was encouraged to drop my belongings in my room and head straight to the dining car.  Though with covid restrictions, community dining is no longer a practice, I visited across the aisle with a couple that turned out to be staying in the room on one side of me.  Though I am somewhat of an introvert in that I am refreshed by time alone, I do feel it’s good for me to spend time with people.  Community dining kind of forced me to do that.  Sadly, to allow for the spacing out of people, the dining car is only open to sleeper car passengers.  Of course, there is still a café car with some decent packaged meals. 

 Returning to my room and, tired from my short night, I stretched out for a nap.  On this longer leg of the journey, I splurged and got a bedroom.  A couch by day is made into a twin bed for sleeping, and an upper bunk can be pulled down for an extra person.  There is a tiny wet bath as well as a comfortable chair facing the couch.  With a Mitford audio book going, I drifted in and out.  Since I know the stories so well, I just let it play as a comforting backdrop to my sleep. 

 When I awoke and looked out the window, I saw that we had traveled into snow country.  I wasn’t too sure where we were, but we were traveling in a southeastern direction from Sacramento, so probably near the Sierra Nevada mountains.  

By midafternoon when we passed Donner Lake, I could tell by the pressure in my ears that we had climbed to a higher elevation.  A quick search when I had a bit of service showed that the surface of the lake is more than a mile above sea level. 

 

Donner Lake

Donner Lake

The view out my window is in a generally southeast direction, but across the hall from my room is a windowed hallway, so I can take pictures that direction also.  Of course, out the side windows is always challenging in a moving train.  You will either get blur, reflections, or dirt smudges.  But photos are just reminders of all we’ve seen anyway. 

 

In the foothills of the Sierra Nevada Mountains

As the afternoon light began to face, the mountains became low, golden hills, highlighted by the setting sun. 

 

As the sun set somewhere behind the train, the land flattened out and looked to be covered with a dusting of snow, which I believe was actually salt.  The afterglow hung over the hazy horizon for a long time.

 

Sunday morning began rather early.  Though I slept with a white noise maker right by my head, some loud clunking noise woke me.  When I parted the curtains, I could see that the sky was beginning to lighten.  The nearby hills were snowy and wind turbines stood like ghosts in the weak light. 

 

Once I’d looked out the window for a while, I knew I’d never get back to sleep.  Figuring that we had to have crossed into mountain time during the night, I realized that the dining room was probably open for breakfast.  I pulled on yesterday’s clothes and headed down.  This morning I got a tomato and cheese omelet with grits.  It brought back memories, as the first time I ever tried grits was on the Coast Starlight, down in southern CA.  I thought that they were the weirdest sounding food, and had put them in the same category as squid, but my server convinced me to try them with a bit of butter and bacon.  I’ve loved them ever since. 

 

Breakfast on the California Zephyr

Back in the old days there were flyers and maps on the train and in stations, providing details for each of the routes, along with timetables of stops.  With these tools, it was fairly easy to keep track of where we are at a given time.  None of these exist anymore so I often don’t even know what state we are in.  My best guess is that during breakfast we were still travelling though Nevada, or possibly had moved into Utah.  As we wound through a valley, at times I could catch a glimpse of our forward cars. 

 

Being in a valley the sun didn’t reach the train but painted the higher hills golden.  Once we reach flat land, the sun broke over the horizon. 

 

By late morning we were traveling through Utah.  Our conductor pointed out Arches National Park in the distance, but I couldn’t see the arch he mentioned, or anything else that would indicate a park.  The red rock certainly looked like what I pictured Utah to be.