Day 3

Day 3 – Aboard the Southwest Chief, number 3, to Los Angeles

I woke up on the third day in a rather peculiar position. No, I hadn’t fallen out of bed during the night, I was in the unusual position of actually WANTING my train to be late.  Why on Earth would you WANT your train to be late? Well, I have a hotel waiting for me in Los Angeles. Check in time is 3 pm. The Southwest Chief, IF it arrives on time, will arrive at 8:15 am. That’s a long time to waste so I called ahead and requested early check in. Early means any time after noon, so, still hoping for at least 4 hours late.

The Chief did not disappoint.

Oh, the ride was great. The scenery: unparalleled on any route, Amtrak or otherwise. It just seemed like, as with the Cardinal the day before wait, what day is it now? We always seemed to be stopped. Yay.

So as I was saying, I woke up in Garden City, Kansas. Good sign. Garden City, Kansas is one of those mythical stops in the middle of the night that you know the train makes but you usually sleep through? You know like, Winnemucca, NV and Sand Point, ID. Since Armona was so attentive and had started a pot of coffee in our car the very idea of going back to sleep was out of the question. Off to the diner car. Breakfast is with Crystal and her daughter Sky. Sky thinks she’s a monkey and proceeded throughout the meal to demonstrate her ability to sound “just like a monkey”. Crystal just browsed the internet on her phone. Granted I may not be the most sparkling personality on the planet but at least I don’t impersonate primates and I have the class to leave my cell phone in my room during meals. 

Anyway, so we’re in Kansas and I’m eating with hippies and we’re going something like 1 mph. I mean like literally 1 mph. The conductor announced, because apparently quiet time had expired at 6:35 am, that we were creeping along because the BNSF, he pronounced it like a word Binseff, had done track work last night and we were like literally the 3^rd train to go over it so they wanted to watch us and see if we derailed or anything and if so, then they’d know they had made a boo boo. Comforting. Meanwhile, Curious Georgette across the table is trying grapefruit for the first time. Thus ensued several minutes of gagging sounds, horrific faces, choking motions and pleas of “get it away from me” in the outside voice of a 3^rd grade girl. On a train. And I haven’t had any of that coffee yet.

It finally comes and it is good. I mean like, really good. Seriously, if anyone knows what brand of coffee Amtrak serves I’d like to know. It makes the primate sounds more tolerable. And lo and behold whatever had been mesmerizing Crystal had apparently lost its luster and she started chatting. Long story short, which option I wish I had been offered, family reunion. Huge family. Middle of Arizona. Drinking. Fighting…. Yadda yadda yadda. I’ve said somewhere else on this blog that you win some and you lose some with dining car partners and this meal mercifully came to an end, as did our ludicrously slow speed restriction, and I made my way to shower. Armona had converted my room for daytime use and I was ready to enjoy the scenery of Colorado and the Raton pass.

A peculiar thing about train travel and meals is that as you move farther west you keep getting hours back here and there as you go from one time zone to the next. This makes the time between meals seem like it is extra-long in some cases. In east-bound travel the reverse occurs and you keep losing hours. This makes it seem like every time you turn around they are shoving food down your throat.

It was a thankfully unremarkable day during which I took hundreds of photos and at least as many videos. The scenery changed dramatically as we left Kansas for Colorado becoming much more desert-like. Cactus began to appear along with the occasional yucca and Joshua Tree.

In La Junta, during a “fresh air break”, I was standing in the parking lot in a relatively smoke-free zone talking with another rider about the engines on our train, our backs to the main boulevard running behind us when ‘Wham!’ (I know, I’ve used “’Wham!’ before but seriously, this was a ‘Wham!’ moment) a car runs into another car. Air bags deploy. Fluids begin to drip. Other than that, nothing but the sound of the two locomotives idling behind us. I remember thinking to myself how time must be standing still for whoever was in that car. People were moving and getting out of the car on their own power and within seconds of the actual accident the police arrived on the scene and ambulances arrived soon thereafter. Our new crew was determined to make up the now 2 plus hours we were behind schedule so a toot of the horn and the “all aboard!” from the conductor and we left the poor victims to their own fates. I’m sure they were ok, but the one car was totaled.

Dinner time. At last. Seems like hours since we ate last. Damned time zones. Dinner is with George, Ray-Lynn and their granddaughter Hannah who are traveling to Winslow, Arizona to stay at a restored Harvey House. Google it if you don’t know what a Harvey House is. This particular one has one of only 3 5-star restaurants in the state of Arizona. Maybe someday I’ll stay at one of those.

I had pan-seared shrimp cakes with rice and veg. For desert, Amtrak’s chocolate mousse could induce diabetic coma in a cinder-block, but I decided to risk it anyway.

After dinner I found the lounge car crammed with the people from the middle coach which was apparently quite hot and the A/C was not coping with it so I hightailed it back to my room and just watched the desert drift past my window. By now it was 7:30 and we were just arriving in Albuquerque. I perused the Navajo vendors wares on the platform with the folks I’d just eaten with and took some good pictures, but it was really hot out so I sought shelter back in my room. As requested, Armona had made my bed up while I ate so I settled in for the night and enjoyed watching the sun set.

This brings me to another peculiarity of train travel. Sun sets. Going west, sun sets seem to take forever. Going east, just the reverse. This had not yet become apparent to me but I did observe to one of the other passengers in my car that it seemed like the sun takes forever to set here.

A quick check of the Amtrak app told me that we were now 3 hours behind schedule. Yay.

Continued on Day 4.