In honor of ampersand day, I will be using & instead of "and" whenever I remember to do it. 

This is our last day on the California Zephyr.  Today, we'll travel through Nevada & California, ending up in Emeryville.  

Last night saw the departure of Loud Lady & Shower Guy:  they got off last night at Salt Lake City.  Our regrets are two:  first, we will never know the end of the saga of the dog & son.  I'm betting on the dog.  Secondly, I will never get to see the now infamous Mary Poppins bag, about which we have heard much over the past few days.  What, I wish to know, is a Mary Poppins bag?  Is it a bag with pictures of Mary Poppins on it?  Is it a bag out of which Mary Poppins will pop?  (If so, I totally want one!)  Or is it a basic carpet bag, which looks something like the bag Mary Poppins pulled her lamp & everything else out of.  (I could use a real bag like hers, too!) I suspect that it's just a carpet bag, but now I'll never know.  Great lost opportunities.

On this leg of the train, the better scenery is actually on the north side of the train, where our roommette is.   But the car had emptied out to a great degree--at least half the roommettes were empty, so we had no trouble looking out of whichever side of the train we wanted to.  

The part of Nevada we traveled through was mostly very flat, very hot desert.  You'll see in the photos that this is very different scenery from high desert in Utah that we traveled through yesterday. At one point, near Hazen, NV, an announcement was made that we were going to have to slow down quite a bit while we passed through an active fire zone.  An industrial yard where someone collected railroad ties to be repurposed went up in smoke.  Thousands of railroad ties, all soaked in petroleum began burning on Tuesday afternoon.  (We were told that the number 6 train, the California Zephyr heading east--our train is 5--was held up here for 3 hours yesterday.)  You can see photos here of the fire when it was new. They apparently still don't know what caused the fire, but Tuesday was one of the hottest days they've had there & any spark would send all that petroleum right up.   The burning petroleum also meant that the air was unhealty to breathe & everyone who lives nearby was asked to stay indoors.  School was canceled.  By the time we came by, something like 16 hours later, the piles had been greatly reduced, but the fires was still burning (as you can see from my photos) & speculation was it will continue to burn for days.

Once we got to California, we headed back up into the mountains: this time, the Sierra Nevada.  Someone on the train (not us) saw a moose.  Someone else saw a Bald Eagle.  At one point, I'm pretty sure I saw a porcupine.  I only got a glimpse, but it was a big gray spiky ball attached to the skinny part of a pine tree--way up in the air! Not sure what else it could be.  I found a photo on the Internet that looks quite a lot like what I saw.  I'd say 90% certain that what I saw was a porcupine.  Fun for me; Tim saw one way up a tree in Alaska, when we were riding the train back up to Anchorage from Kenai Fjord, but I missed that one.

The changing scenery throughout this trip provides a good window into the huge variety of geography that traveling in the US exposes you to.   Tim & I have traveled to 49 of the 50 states--North Dakota still to go--but we know many people who have never traveled out of the state where they were born, or who, when they travel, travel only abroad.  They are missing a lot; there is a lot here to see & to love.

We rolled into Emeryville about half an hour early.  Our bags were ready for pickup immediately & we were checked into our hotel & up in the room before the scheduled arrival time.  When I checked in online (not sure what that gets us--we always still have to check in once we get there), I was offered an "upgrade" to a room with a bay view, for only $20 extra.  I declined.  When we checked in in person, we got a room with a bay view anyway. Technically, this is a bay view room.  We can certainly see the bay from our room, but it's a good long way off, & we can't see much. Photo appended. Definitely not worth $20.  

We enjoyed the train ride (the moreso because we were able to solve for ourselves the problem of the view), but we are not in a hurry to spend three straight days & nights on a train again.  It gets hard to sit all that time--there's nowhere to walk!  I can certainly recommend the California Zephyr though.  I suggest you call rather than making reservations online; that way you can be sure you get a south-side roomette!

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