What an amazing train ride! Very soon after leaving the Bay Area we started to climb the fir-covered mountains of the Sierra Nevada. This mountain range is part of an almost continuous chain of mountain ranges running through North, Central and South America to Antarctica! We climbed slowly higher to travel through the Donner Pass so named for the ill-fated Donner party of settlers who were forced to spend the winter here. Of the 80 odd settlers who set out only 45 survived to reach California; some of them resorted to cannibalism to survive.
The tidal flats of the Bay
The little mountain town of Truckee
All the rivers were raging after a very wet winter and spring. Quite magnificent!
Then we were skimming across the arid wastes of Nevada - old river plains or sea bed eroded over eons. Such a contrast from the rocky tree-covered mountains we’d just traversed but rather magnificent in their vastness.
Some distance east of Reno
And we were into the Moab desert.
We hit Utah and Salt Lake City in the dead of night. Come sun up the next day we rode the open plains of the Wild West of Utah with its buttes and mesa - even saw antelope along the track. And yes it was like traveling through a Cowboy Western - any moment you expected to see John Wayne or Lee Marvin galloping by. The place names conjured up lots of images from movies and cowboy westerns. All the while we were crossing the deserts we could see snow encrusted peaks looming on the horizon. All too soon we were crossing into Colorado and following the river back to its source in the Rockies.
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