My Chicago ‘burbs high school chum, Merri, called to say she was coming to California in March, driving out to deposit her adult daughter, the car, and the daughter’s possessions at her ex-boyfriend’s house. The two had broken up last year, the daughter had moved back home, but now they wanted to give it another try.
Oh, and, by the way, after her daughter was in place, would I like to join Merri on the California Zephyr from Emeryville to Chicago for a leisurely trip back to the magnificent city of our youth? And then I could just fly home to Oakland after visiting our favorite Chicago museums. A couple-of-days train adventure – why not? The last time I was on a train in the US was to Girl Scout Camp in northern Wisconsin.
Merri’s proposal sounded fun and so very civilized: I thought of the original south-Chicago-manufactured Pullman cars crisscrossing the country; had visions of sleek, gleaming locomotives and plush, domed observation cars winding their way through snow-capped peaks; I imagined evenings dressing for dinner at tables with linens and silver and fine food.
I had broken my right ring finger in a fall while hanging a picture the week before, but I was sure my splinted finger wouldn’t be an impediment. So Merri got the tickets and I packed my bags.
The Good
Amtrak’s California Zephyr #6 Streamliner departs daily from Emeryville at 9:10 AM, with scheduled arrival at Chicago’s Union Station at 2:50 PM two days later. It makes 31 brief stops plus half-hour stops at Salt Lake City and Denver as it chugs eastward. The train, with two levels, holds 300 people, but I’d say ours was half full. We booked a “Roomette,” with space for two adults via a fold-down upper bunk, meals included and bathrooms down the hall. The price was right, at $651 for the two of us.
The Zephyr staff was fantastic. Every one – counter agents, conductors, porters, servers, ticket takers -- was personable, good-humored, informed and helpful. Our porter, Ainsley, whose girlfriend, Tonya from Flint, Michigan was traveling in his room with him, went out of his way for Merri and me, whether because he expected a generous tip, was well-trained, or thought we were feeble -- it didn’t matter. He certainly saw my splinted finger and gave us extra help. He offered to bring dinner to us if we were late. Best of all, he gave me, on the sly, an empty roomette since Merri had an injured hamstring and I the broken finger, understanding it might be tough for either of us to climb into the top bunk. What a great guy, and I tipped him well.
Our fellow travelers ran the gamut of demographic, economic and interest groups, a true mischmasch of Americans – students, Amish family, science fiction fan, farmers, musician, athletes, hunter, city-dwellers, as well as European and Asian visitors to the US. It was remarkably easy to find something in common with the most unlikely of potential conversation companions, and I made several new Facebook friends.
And we brought our own entertainment: I packed up my ‘60’s Monopoly and Scrabble game sets, while Merri brought four bottles of Pinot Noir, a large bottle of Scotch, and a box of Triscuits. We invited others to join in the games and the drink, while onlookers shared our land-acquiring, hotel-building and word-generating successes and losses with laughs or groans. Merri won each time at Monopoly, while I regularly mortgaged most of my properties and frequently landed in jail.
The food was great. At the first lunch, just after Sacramento, I ordered the Angus beef hamburger, followed by Angus beef steak with Bearnaise sauce for dinner near Winnemucca. After those initial eyes-bigger-than-my-stomach moments, for the rest of the trip I had salads and lighter meals, with desserts of course, all delicious.
But the best part of the trip was the scenery, and it was as advertised. The train took us north towards Richmond and Pinole, then along the southern edge of San Pablo Bay, crossed to Benicia over the Carquinez Straight, then paralleled Suisun Slough – in all my years in the Bay Area I had never seen these glistening waters and green hills so closely, and they were beautiful. I felt grateful to be living in northern California.
It only got better. We passed through Gold Country, then high above Donner Lake, crossed the snowy, sunlit, fir-forested Sierra, and dropped down into Nevada for the sunset. In the distance beyond the scrub plateau were snow-covered buttes. Gene Autry’s “Let me ride through the wide open country that I love...let me straddle my old saddle underneath the western skies,” was on my mind.
Utah was impressive. Massive undulating rock formations striped in red, orange, yellow and brown sped past. We saw openings used by ancient Pueblo Indians. Then the Colorado River appeared. The eponymous, 25 mile long Ruby Canyon was next, on the border between Utah and Colorado. Its striking cliffs contain the Colorado River, and the canyon is only accessible by raft, kayak or the train, which hugs the base of the walls.
And then the Rockies, the main attraction for hours, with Amtrak’s 31 tunnels. The late-winter views were indeed spectacular, as if you were in a mountain-top ski lodge or an eagle’s roost. These landscapes from California through Colorado centuries ago were part of the Viceroyalty of New Spain, and then later of the Mexican Republic, and of course were home to indigenous Amerindians long before the arrival of European explorers.
The Bad
The first surprise was the lack of Wi-Fi. I had specifically brought no books or magazines since I didn’t want to lug them with me, and I assumed I could read on my tablet. Of course, if I had bothered to check out the Zephyr’s features on the Amtrak site, I would have learned this in advance. So I was without my regular updates on the Mueller and other investigations.
The next sign that all might not be well was the absence of the observation car. No reason was given – just an announcement that a second dining car would be used as a lounge/scenery-viewing car. That was a huge disappointment to everyone on board. One of the whole points of our trip was to hang out in that iconic car, although the regular windows were certainly adequate to view the American landscape.
The china was ersatz -- look-alike white plastic plates and bowls designed to be discarded after each use. We assumed Amtrak can no longer afford to pay for the water and workers, yet discarding plastic after one use seemed criminal.
We were admonished for bringing our own wine into the dining-cum-observation car, although we managed to hide it after that and our minder eventually ignored our violation. I felt there needed to be information materials about history and landscape, although apparently in the summer there are guides on board. And sitting for three days with minimal walking and no exercise took its toll.
The bathrooms on the car – one upstairs on our floor and two downstairs – were tiny, just like airplane bathrooms. Downstairs also were two showers, but after peeking into them, Merri and I agreed there was something vaguely disturbing about them, and we decided no showers until we were safe in Chicago.
We got out for a breath of icy, fresh air at the Winter Park, Colorado stop but, surprise, there was no platform. A small, yellow, plastic step stool was placed in the snow, but shorter-legged passengers had trouble reaching it and all around the stool were mounds of un-shoveled white stuff. We weren’t exactly wearing our mukluks on the train, so feet got cold and wet.
And the delays – I knew that comes with Amtrak territory. We lost an hour in Utah or Nevada somewhere, and a few more in western Colorado. No reason was given.
Right after the Rockies comes the Great Plains -- just brown fields under grey skies out to the horizon on both sides. Some call this fly-over country. It’s where rugged individualism and the frontier tradition burn brightly. Alongside the tracks were tiny towns, trailer parks, sheds, laundry lines with socks and torn work shirts, rusty tractors and old tires. We saw homeless encampments. Occasionally the Zephyr stopped and locals boarded for a brief trip. I wondered why some of the people here crowned as their new Messiah a New Yorker with a golden toilet, fake tan and cat-eyed Slavic bride. Would we ever see amber waves of grain again? Or was that just propaganda.
The Ugly
We were at the Denver station for hours, but this wasn’t Amtrak’s fault; rather, it was Mother Nature’s and Boeing’s. The March bomb cyclone snow storm had passed through Denver two days before, and we thought we had dodged a bullet. However, the previous day’s Zephyr #6 had been stuck at the Denver station all night and was still there when we pulled in late at 9 PM. The Denver airport had been closed for two days, with 1,400 flights cancelled. Then, Boeing 737 Max 8’s were grounded, so other airports cancelled flights. The Amtrak engineers attached yesterday’s Zephyr to ours, tail to tail, while people and luggage streamed on to every car of both trains. One implication: no more private room.
Ainsley helped me move my stuff back. Turns out, a Roomette is fine if you’re teenagers or graduate students. Not so great for one tall baby-boomer with a damaged right hand and another boomer with a damaged hamstring. Merri really couldn’t hoist herself up onto the top bunk, so that left me to put my left foot on the edge of her bed, my right foot higher up on a tiny shelf next to the door and sling myself using one hand into the 20” x 6’2” slot. (Merri had a luxurious 24” x 6’6” below.) Honest to god, you had to strap yourself in up there with two seatbelt-like contraptions that hooked into the ceiling. I actually think the bunks in the captured U-505 at the Museum of Science and Industry might have been more comfy, although ours didn’t have a torpedo underfoot.
And as for space for our baggage? Ainsley had asked when we boarded, “Do you want your luggage on the rack?” I assumed that meant on a rack in the room so I said yes.
No, that meant on the open racks by the showers on the lower level of the car (rather than checked), where, in addition to others’ luggage, were some towels, a folded up mattress and a pair of dirty running shoes. There was no “rack” in our room; in fact there was no storage space for anything but small bags and purses, despite the claim of room for “one or two suitcases.”
This meant we had to plan ahead and take out of our luggage downstairs everything we thought we might need upstairs, and make additional lurching trips back down if we forgot something, pulling out the suitcases, digging around and unlocking and locking them each time. Now that I was on the top bunk, what if I needed something, like my socks to keep my feet warm in bed? I’d have to unstrap myself and might step on Merri. Would I stagger down the corridor and stairs in my red PJ’s?
And it gets worse. Somewhere after Provo in the early morning the second day, the vacuum flush mechanism in the toilet upstairs failed. By later that day, both bathrooms downstairs were non-functioning. There were scrawled hand written signs taped to the bathroom doors: “OK to brush teeth, use sink only” and “Toilet broken -- Use toilets in next car” with a big arrow pointing to the right. The bathroom in the next car looked like it had been installed in the 70’s, with a yellow and dark green color scheme, though thankfully that toilet was up to date and still worked.
And The Tragic
We were grateful the bomb cyclone preceded us along our path and we weren’t smothered by an avalanche. We had only to endure the Denver delay and passenger influx. But others suffered.
The massive snow dump had had two days to melt. We saw the flooding before anyone else did. First, our train crossed the Platte River and we observed fields interspersed with giant ponds. We paralleled the Missouri River and on its banks saw a multi-story office building with the entire ground floor parking structure flooded to the top. The Great Plains were covered with water to the horizon, and waves lapped at our tracks. Our train couldn’t continue east of Omaha because water covered an upcoming bridge. So we were re-routed.
Remember that we were two trains now, butt to butt. This elongated machine slowly backed up and lumbered south on minor tracks to drier land. There was lots of waiting here and there, the double-Zephyr silent and unmoving. We passed rural railroad crossings where clusters of people gathered and filmed us.
The conductor periodically announced a new arrival time – first delayed three more hours, then five, then seven. The dining car offered a late, simple stew dinner. We slept a bit. Ultimately the Zephyr pulled into Union Station at 3AM, a full 12 hours behind schedule.
The delay was not Amtrak’s fault, and I doubt any increases in funding for America’s infrastructure or public transportation would have made a difference this time. And we saw first-hand the early effects of a storm that would only worsen and cause massive damage, dislocation and economic loss throughout the Midwest in the coming weeks and months.
Certainly additional financial support for US trains would improve travel comfort, although I imagine the trip would never be as novel or elegant as riding in the Pullman Columbian Exposition car or Pioneer Zephyr back in the day.
Would I Recommend the California Zephyr?
I’m thrilled to have had the scenery, and I recommend the Zephyr for that, especially between the Bay Area and Denver. I was stimulated to learn more about geological processes, rocks, minerals and gems, and about the history of the North American continent. It was useful to get out of my Bay Area bubble and take an anthropological field trip across America’s heartland. On a less snarky note, and heeding Andrew Sullivan’s stern advice to Bill Maher Friday night to have more empathy, three days dining with random Americans on a cross-country journey opens your heart to those on other sides of economic, cultural and political chasms.
For greater comfort and privacy, a good option would be the Zephyr’s larger “Bedroom,” with wider beds and private shower, toilet and sink, but the price quoted to Merri was $1,700, and $2,100 on another call. (Amtrak fares are never published, and vary greatly depending on season, availability and booking lead time.) Better yet, fly: O’Hare seems very appealing in retrospect.
As for Merri’s daughter, looks like she’s going to make it work.