I am siting in the observation car of the Amtrak California Zephyr train, hurtling along at 78mph across the barren Northern Nevada desert between Winnemucca and Reno. It’s 6:50am and I have spent the last 8 hours onboard since Salt Lake City. So far, its been an adventure. We flew up to SLC yesterday and spent the day with our dear friends Deb and Melissa, mostly just hanging out and chatting the afternoon away until dinner, when we all. met up with Kim’s friend Joni for a pleasant meal at an uncrowded local bistro. Our train was scheduled to depart SLC at 11:40pm so we spent a few more hours at Deb & Melissa’s while Melissa figured out where the train station was (it should have been a clue that it was not a local landmark), and I spent the time on the Amtrak website trying to figure out whether the train, the #5 coming from Chicago/Denver, was on time and when we were likely to be able to board. My image of the start of the journey was completely off. When I think of an Amtrak trip, I think of starting in New York, Boston or Washington D.C.. Denizens of the Northeast Corridor are not unfamiliar with Amtrak since it is often the best way to get between those cities or to the stops in between like Philadelphia, Baltimore or Wilmington. You launch from a nice big marble urban station that has last-century overtones and lots of shops and such to gather your snacks for the journey. That is decidedly NOT what happens with Amtrak in SLC. Melissa drove back and forth as we tried to find something that looked like a train station, but all we found was tracks and a few utility buildings and a sign that implied that we were in the right place. Finally, Deb got out and hunted around until she figured out that one of those utility buildings was, indeed, the Amtrak waiting room, but that you had to walk around to the track side to get to the door. So Kim and I wandered off in that direction with Deb & Melissa chucking at us and our tentative steps towards something unlike the travel arrangements we were used to or expected. The waiting room was a dozen seats, a plexiglass protected service counter and locked and coded bathrooms. There were three small groups of us boarding the Zephyr that night and the conductor in the waiting area knew our names and said he was expecting us. Finally, when the train was a few minutes from arriving, we went outside and stood for 15 minutes by the siding, waiting for the passengers retraining in SLC to walk the distance of the train and across the tracks. That’s when the conductor, who was informally standing near the crossing to keep us from running across prematurely yelled, “All Aboard for the California Zephyr!”
We walked down the tracks past the huge locomotive and baggage car to the 532 car where we were to be lodged in Room C and piled on to the double-decker car and up the narrow stairs. We had reserved the best accommodations available for two people, which was a “Bedroom” with toilet and shower. Little did we know that it should have been written as toilet/shower since it was all in one cramped molded plastic cabinet…with the shower head in a constant state of slow dripping. Hmm. The room is 7’6” x 6’8”, and I think that included the toilet/shower. The attendant did her best to show us what was what about the controls and spaces of the room, but since the two of us and our two carry-on bags took up 110% of the space, I’m not sure we both heard everything. Kim would be taking the top bunk with webbing to keep her in and I would take the slightly bigger lower bunk. Once set up as bunks, there was about 2 square feet of floor space, which had to be left clear to open the toilet/shower door. What that meant was that I had to sit on the lower bunk and let Kim unpack her things and get ready for bed and then once she got up into the upper bunk, it was my turn to do likewise. In other words we got into a Tetris-like system of doing one thing at a time and shifting bags, shoes, clothes, toilet kits, phones, etc. from here to there and back to get the minimally required things done to get to bed for the night (it was midnight after all, and most of the train was fast asleep). Once we settled down for the night we could then feel the gentle rocking of the train on the rails and the reality of the thin-pad bunks settled upon us. I’m the one who falls asleep fast, but Kim is the one with the eye mask and love of sleeping. We really couldn’t see or hear the other, so we just hunkered down as best we could. To short-cut the night (which included one hour time zone change…gaining an hour as we headed west), I was up and down probably three times to just sit on the edge of the bunk and wonder why time was ticking by so slowly. One of those times involved a trip into the toilet with my phone so I wouldn’t have to turn on a light and disturb Kim. It was tight, but I managed. Kim stayed in the upper bunk all night, but says she had an equally fitful night.
Once we pulled into Winnemucca at about 6am, I decided to get up and go through the rigamarole of repacking and dressing and doing the minimally required ablutions to start the day. That alone woke me up since I was back into a new game of Tetris making it all work without stubbing a toe or hitting a head. It gave me a sense of accomplishment just to get up and out of the room into the relatively spacious and empty hallway. Here at last, free at last! I went back to the next car, past the even smaller sleeping bunks that were half the size of our “spacious” room, to the dining car, which was just setting up for breakfast service. It seems that Amtrak has as much class distinction as the rest of the country. If you have sleeping accommodations, you get meal service included, whereas if you are in coach, sitting up all night, you can buy snacks or have a sit-down meal after the sleepers have dined and you have to pay ala carte for your meal. My the time Kim got up and back to the dining car, the service was underway and we had to share a table with a couple from Maryland who were sorry to say that they had been on the train for three nights from Chicago. They had the same room size we had and were less than thrilled with the program and very ready to detrain later today. The breakfast was a typical diner menu breakfast and was just fine.
We are now sitting in the observation car, which means I can type on my iPad and Kim can do her puzzles…all to our heart’s content. We are sitting in Reno and its 9am, so we have lived two Amtrak lifetimes and only been on the train 10 hours…8 hours to go through the Donner Pass, Truckee, Sacramento and down onto the East Bay. My overall impression (remembering that I have 8 hours to go today and then 16 hours on Friday as we go from Emeryville to Oceanside) is that I will be able to survive this trip just fine and keep myself amused enough with my iPad so long as the reception (5G cellular, not WiFi, strangely enough) holds up and the seat-side plugs keep me charged. We have recently started categorized things as repeatable activities or one-and-done. Taking Amtrak overnight is definitely a one-and-done.