Submitted For Your Consideration

September 2010

The Salmon-Colored Rock

My husband and I recently took a trip out west to Portland, OR, and Boulder, CO. It was a combined vacation/take-care-of-family-matters trip that was semi-spontaneous in nature. As part of our travels, we decided to take the train from Portland to Denver, in order to experience what it's like to travel by train overnight -- and in a sleeping compartment, no less!

The train trip was in two legs, starting at around 2:30 p.m. in Portland, requiring a change of trains in Sacramento (where we arrived bright and early at 6 the next morning and waited five hours for our connection), after which we took another train across the scenic Sierra Nevadas and Rockies into Denver (where we arrived at 7 or so the following evening and had to go through all sorts of hell to get a rental car, because the airport rental office was the only one open that late -- nice planning, huh?).

When we told people we were traveling by train and how long it would take, they seemed to think we were, well, crazy. "I guess you'll find out if you enjoy each other's company," was a commonly heard refrain.

Now, despite the fact that I've started off making this sound like the absolute worst trip-from-Hell story ever, the truth is I discovered that I absolutely love train travel.

One of the nice things about it is that it's so stress free compared with plane travel. You show up, you board the train (you can check your bags or carry them on) and that's it. No lines, no need to check in two hours before your departure time -- just be there and ready to leave on schedule.

Another reason it's so stress free is that the attendants (who administer to your needs in the sleeping and dining cars) are so nice. Everyone is so pleasant. Maybe because the passengers (unlike some forms of transportation I could name) don't feel like they're being herded about and jammed together like cattle, thus they feel more relaxed and don't get nearly as testy with the railroad attendants as they often do with, say, flight attendants. Flight attendants, in turn, start to feel quite a lot of stress themselves (which they sometimes take out on the passengers). It creates a whole endless cycle of unpleasant feelings and bad vibes all around.

Train travel, on the other hand, is so relaxed and humane by comparison that the cycle tends to be more in the manner of good vibes and feelings all around.

Another nice feature of train travel is the ability to walk around the train. On the first leg of our trip, the train had a "parlor car" with lots of windows providing lovely views of the mountains we traveled through. As an added benefit, it also had wi-fi, a feature we took advantage of when we weren't gazing at the lovely views.

The parlor car, by the way, was available for use by the sleeping car passengers. And, as sleeping car passengers, our fare also included all meals (breakfast, lunch and dinner), and I'm not talking about tiny portions of food. These were actual meals served on a plate with real eating utensils and everything.

Even the five-hour layover in Sacramento wasn't entirely awful. Unlike an airport, it's not like we had to hang around the train station. We took the opportunity to wander over to the Sacramento River, stroll the river walk and admire one of the bridges leading into the city. In addition, a nearby Starbucks was open. Probably catering to the train-riding crowd, as all the rest of downtown Sacramento seemed to be closed. It was Sunday and the place looked like a ghost town. (On the second leg of our journey, I was told by a Sacramento resident that the downtown didn't look any different during the week. She might have been exaggerating -- maybe.)

Which reminds me. When you travel and have your meals on a train, you end up meeting people. That's because when you eat in the dining car, "community seating" is used to conserve space. So if you're traveling with a companion, you'll be seated with two other people. You get to meet all sorts of interesting people on a train. They're fun to talk to. They're usually people who enjoy the travel experience. And (as an aside) they always ask, "What do you do?" When I told them I wrote mystery novels, this usually generated quite a bit of conversation. Naturally, I told them about my book and gave them my card. Apart from the joy of having these wholly unexpected marketing opportunities, sharing meals with others creates a sense of community. A bond with fellow travelers.

The last aspect of train travel I'll mention is the scenery. I spent a good deal of time reading on the train, but I also spent a lot of time staring out the window. When we were traveling through the Colorado River canyon, an announcer informed us that we were getting views that could only be had by riding the train or river rafting. This made me set my book aside and simply look at the landscape.

The canyon walls towered over us, in hues ranging from orange and to reddish-brown. The views were truly breathtaking. I tried to get photos, knowing that they'd never do justice to the actual thing. Finally, I just sat and watched. As the landscape changed, I was struck by one hill in particular -- it looked like a parfait, including a layer of bright salmon pink. I'd never seen salmon-colored rock before. It stood out so boldly from the rest of the terrain. And I would never have seen it from a plane.

Don't get me wrong. Plane travel is fine as far as it goes. If you just need to get from Point A to Point B, it'll do the job.

Train travel, however, is for those seeking to savor the process of getting from one place to another. And sometimes it really is about the journey and not just the destination.

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