America 2013: Day Twelve - December 3 | Amtrak California Zephyr

Doesn't matter where you are, it's the same old stripes, the same old stars, the same old highways cuttin' across, the same old moon turnin' on and off. Canned up Chevy at a traffic light, with a pretty girl on a Saturday night, and Willie Nelson singin' "On the Road" again. Lookin' around it's good to see, everybody out there keepin' it country.

- Jake Owen

Morning came and found us on the outskirts of Denver, Colorado. We were a few minutes ahead of time, which is something of a rarity for Amtrak, whose services are notoriously late when they are using freight lines, as the California Zephyr is.

I woke up during the night and could see the Milky Way, but by first light, there was cloud cover again, though the sun did manage to sneak through to produce a spectacular yellow-orange sunset. We had breakfast quite early, before arriving in Denver so we could get in a walk around the station before snagging some seats in the domed sightseeing car for the beginning of our journey through the Rockies.

Mile High Sunrise

After battling a cold for the last few days, I feel better today than I have for some time, despite the dry nature of the air-conditioned air on-board. I think that a combination of lots of sleep – I had about nine hours last night, courtesy of an extra hour switching time zones, from Central to Mountain – and the relaxation. It’s hard to be anything but lazy on a long-distance train. We’ve spent the day enjoying the incredible alpine scenery out of the windows, eating pretty good food, and getting a bit of exercise in at each of the station stops.

The two hours between Denver and Winter Park are some of the most spectacular in all of America. We climbed to an ear-popping altitude via a series of long switchbacks and tunnels, passing through narrow valleys, the track sometimes towering above a roaring river below. The more altitude we gained, the more snow we began to see. None of the pictures we took will quite do the journey justice. It’s an incredible landscape, full of towering rock formations, fast-flowing rivers and snow drifts. 

The snow was just starting to fall when we pulled into Winter Park, CO.

Train travel is great in that it can take you to parts of the country that not even cars go. The only downside is some of the passengers. Interestingly, there are quite a few Australians on our carriage, including one guy from Melbourne who apparently doesn’t feel the cold, because he’s gotten off at every stop wearing shorts. He must be insane, because the weather isn’t what you’d call balmy. 

Unfortunately, there’s also a gentleman on board who seems to possess the uncanny ability to destroy every single toilet he goes into. Lauryn and I have the dubious honour of being closest to the bathroom, so we get it worse, but when people down the hall are poking their heads out in distress, you know it’s pretty bad. We’ve resorted to using the downstairs bathrooms. Aside from that one quibble, the trip has been brilliant. You’re never short of something spectacular to look at.

It was snowing lightly when we stopped at Winter Park this morning (a ski resort town already in full swing for the 2013-14 season), and the low clouds followed us through Colorado. Because of the major delays the last time I took this train out to the Bay Area, I’ve seen things today that we passed in the night last time, so it’s like a brand new journey. We were alongside the mighty Colorado River for most of the day. In summer, it’s popular with white-water rafting enthusiasts who apparently take time out of their pursuit to ‘moon’ the train as it goes past. Around lunch time, we passed the 6 California Zephyr, the service going east to Chicago.

We left Colorado and entered adjoining Utah just before our 6.30pm dinner reservation was called. The state capital, Salt Lake City, is the next big stop, around 10.30pm tonight. Just after dinner, we saw our first signs of the enormous winter storm that originated in the Pacific Northwest (around Seattle, Washington). It must have blown through Utah earlier in the day, and dumped a heck of a lot of snow. Everything we passed was blanketed in white. 

In the end, we stayed up until our train arrived in Salt Lake City so we could take a walk along the platform. Snow everywhere, and it was about -10 Celsius– but the humidity was the real killer! Lauryn and I are hoping that a lot of snow here in Utah translates to plenty in Lake Tahoe for our skiing days next week.

Snow on the ground in Salt Lake City

Tomorrow, we go through the Nevada desert, the Sierra Nevada Mountain Range, through the Californian capital, Sacramento, and on to Emeryville in the San Francisco Bay Area at about 4.00pm Pacific time.

Until then.