The Trip Home and Wrap Up
Sunday, June 22 to Wednesday, June 25
Leaving Chicago - Monday
Today we start our journey home. The train didn’t leave until 2:00, so we slept in a little and then had breakfast at the Land and Lake Kitchen. It hadn’t gotten too hot yet, so we sat outside and had a very nice breakfast. You could tell it was a weekend as there was a lot more people walking by on the sidewalk.
We took our time eating breakfast and then got our bags and got a cab to Union Station. We were a little worried about having to find our way around the construction again, but it turned out to be very easy. First off, it was much less crowded on a Sunday morning, and we were dropped off at the entrance where the elevators were. We were checking our luggage, and that area was very near the elevators as was the Metropolitan Lounge.
At many of the larger Amtrak stations they have a special lounge for sleeper car passengers. The lounge has a place where you can store your luggage that you don’t check while you’re wait for the train, there is comfortable seating, there are restrooms, phone charging outlets, and snacks and drinks are available at no charge. The Chicago Metropolitan Lounge is relatively new and is the nicest that Val and I have experienced.
The first time we were in Chicago, the older Metropolitan Lounge was quite small and very crowded. Chicago is a hub for most of the long-distance trains, so Union Station has a lot of rail passengers going through it during the day and the old lounge just didn’t have enough capacity. In 2016 a new Metropolitan Lounge was opened in Chicago, and it is very nice. It has two floors with a lot of room and the few times that Val and I used it; it never got too crowded.
We had a couple of hours to kill before our train left and we were afraid that the construction may have resulted in the lounge being closed, but we were very happy to find it open. We had a nice relaxing time waiting for our train to leave. Since we’d had a late breakfast, we weren’t hungry for lunch, but we did take advantage of the free drinks and snacks available to tide us over until dinner.
Sleeper car passengers get to board the train first and as the train departures are called, someone leads you down to the platform, and it’s very easy. There were several trains leaving at the same time, so our boarding time was about fifteen minutes late, but our train was finally called, and we gathered with the rest of the sleeping car passengers and were led to the train.
The California Zephyr – Monday and Tuesday
We boarded the train and settled in for our two-day trip on the California Zephyr trip from Chicago to Davis, California. The train actually ends in Emeryville which is in the San Francisco area, but it works out for us to get off a little earlier in Davis, CA as there is a hotel very near the train station where we will stay before catching our train home the next morning. I think the Zephyr is the most scenic of the cross country routes as it goes through both the Rockies and Sierras and is scheduled so you do it in the daylight.
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| We're settled in and ready to head for home. |
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| Leaving Chicago |
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| Our last look at the Chicago Skyline. |
Dinner on our first night was one of the more interesting ones we’ve had on the trip. We were seated with two young women named Maddy and Shelby who both make their living with TikTok and Instagram channels. They each had their own channel mainly focusing on travel and they were both here because they had teamed up to do a cross-country train trip from Washington DC to San Francisco for their channels.
I have to admit, I am not of the TikTok / Instagram generation, I’m more of a YouTube person, but we were very impressed by them, they were both very friendly and articulate and we had a nice conversation with them.
After dinner I looked up both of their Instagram channels and looked at some of the videos. They were very well done, and I could see they had a large number of followers and views of their posts. I found it interesting, but it is obviously done for someone much younger than I am, Val and I are probably older than their grandparents. If you are curious about their Instagram channels, Maddy’s is onthemovewithmad and Shelby’s is shelbyreickstravels.
We also ate with a couple from South Korea who were here to visit their daughter. The daughter works in the bay area, but they had come to Colorado to visit Rocky Mountain National Park. The daughter had opted to fly home, but the parents wanted to have an American train trip. They had gotten on in Denver, and because of track work being done, we were an hour and a half late leaving the station.
We had dinner with two women who were heading for Reno. They were both retired and one was a software developer from Myanmar (Burma) and the other was a teacher from Mexico, but they both were now living and working in the US and had been here for a long time. This is the second software developer we’ve met on the train now, pretty unusual.
Our last meal on the Zephyr was with a couple from Florida and we had a long conversation with them until we got chased out of the dining car.
Here are a few photos from some of the most scenic areas we passed through.
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| This is Glenwood Canyon in the Colorado Rockies, the most scenic part of the trip. |
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| This is Interstate 70 through the canyon, building it was an engineering marvel. |
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| We saw quite a few rafters as we passed through Glenwood Canyon. Oddly, there is a tradition that when a train goes by people in the raft moon the train. I have no idea how this started, but as we started through the canyon, the conductor made and announcement jokingly warning people what was coming, and sure enough, that's what happened. |
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| Just outside of Grand Junction, Colorado. |
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| The stop in Grand Junction was long enough for us to get out and stretch our legs. |
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| Sunrise in Eastern Nevada. |
We never made up the time we lost leaving Denver and arrived in Davis around five, an hour and a half late. That wasn’t too bad, and we still had plenty of time to go out and eat dinner. After getting off the train we gathered our luggage and made the short walk to the hotel.
Davis, California – Tuesday Evening and Wednesday Morning
Arrival
We stayed at the Hilton Garden Inn that is within walking distance of the Davis train station. It’s not as close as the hotel in Seattle, but it’s only a five-minute walk so very easy to do. We have stayed there quite a few times, but it was back when it was under different ownership. This is the first time we’ve stayed here since it was bought by Hilton. The hotel is nice, but it could use sprucing up a little, and it looks like they might be in the process of doing that now.
We really like Davis, it is home to the University of California Davis and has the feel of a college town. The downtown area near the train station has lots of restaurants, shops and things to do and is a nice area just to walk around in.
We were hungry so after settling in and freshening up, we headed off to a nearby restaurant that is a favorite of ours. It’s a Mexican restaurant called Tres Hermanas, and we like the food there. It was a nice balmy evening, so we sat outside and had a great dinner and really enjoyed ourselves, we were almost home and back in familiar territory.
We didn’t linger too long though as the train leaves tomorrow morning at 6:55 AM, so we have to be up early.
Coast Starlight – Wednesday
Today is the last day of our journey, and we are taking the Amtrak Coast Starlight from Davis to Paso Robles. Paso Robles is a town just north of where we live in Atascadero and is a more convenient place for us to get off.
We were up a little before six, which is way too early for Val and I, but this was our last day, and we didn’t want to be late for the train. We actually had plenty of time and after the short walk to the station, we had about twenty minutes to wait. The train was right on time, and we boarded and found our compartment and we were underway. Since we weren’t spending the night on the train, we had gotten a roomette which has more room than sitting in coach, but quite a bit less room than a bedroom.
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| Davis has a nice little train station. |
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| Waiting for our train to Arrive. |
We had skipped breakfast at the hotel but were a little hungry, so Val had some breakfast bars that we ate, and the car attendant brought tea for Val and juice for me. I don’t think I’ve mentioned the car attendants before, but they are great. The sleeper car attendant will bring you food and drinks from the dining car, put your beds down in the evening and put them back up in the morning, and generally take care of all your needs.
Going north on the Coast Starlight we usually go through the San Francisco Bay area in the dark, but southbound we saw it in the daylight, and it was very scenic.
For our last meal on the train of this trip, we sat with two women and had a very interesting conversation. They had been in Seattle visiting friends and were heading home on the train. One turned out to be a software developer, our third for the trip, and the other worked in social services so they were in quite opposite fields, much like Val and I. The parents of one of them was from Brazil and they were headed off to Brazil for Carnival next February. They hadn’t been to Carnival before, and Val and I told them how much we had enjoyed our Carnival experience in Rio. We had a very nice time at our last meal on the train.
We got into Paso Robles a half our late, but Val’s friend Marsha was there waiting for us and we were soon home. Thanks again to Marsha for driving us to the station, looking after our house while we were gone and then picking us up today. It is always a little sad for a trip to end, but after seven days and five nights on the train this trip, we are definitely looking forward to our own bed.
My Final Thoughts
As I guessed at the start of this trip, as much as we like train travel, we have had enough for a while. The best part of train travel is being able to relax and watch the world go by outside your window. The food is surprisingly good, but unfortunately, particularly for dinner, the menu is limited and the same on every train, so when you’re on the train for a while, you get tired of the same food. The worst, as I have already mentioned, is the cramped quarters you have when going to bed at night or getting up in the morning. That all said, we still love train travel and will certainly be doing it again, but for now, we can use a little break.
One other thing about the train trip, our train travel didn’t cost us a penny. Val and I have an Amtrak credit card that gives you points toward train travel, and Val and I had enough to cover everything, not bad.
We really enjoyed Michigan and seeing my Aunt Judy and my cousins. Cousin Julie did a great job hosting the cousin’s reunion and that was a special day. My only regret was that we didn’t have a little more time there and in Chicago. I wouldn’t have minded doing a little more sightseeing in Michigan and a little more time with my cousins. Also, I would have liked to have seen Mike play at one of his gigs, but thankfully we did get to see him play at the reunion. Val and I also like Chicago and wish we would have had time to spend a full day or two there. We were looking forward to seeing our friends Ken and Mary Beth who live in the Chicago area, but it just didn’t work out this trip.
Unfortunately, we really didn’t have any way to really squeeze more days in on this trip as we had the Nevada road trip just before this one and have commitments at home right after this trip, so there wasn’t a way to squeeze more time in, but maybe next time.
We have our Tales of the South Pacific Cruise coming up in the fall, but since I covered everything recently in the Nevada road trip blog, I’ll skip the rest and just say, we’ll see you on down the road.
