From The Bay Area to Reno on the California Zephyr

Woke up this morning to high fog ... except right over The City (across the bay) where the sun was shining brightly. Looking out our hotel window I felt s if I was looking at OZ all aglow ... albeit, a greenless version, but none-the-less, just as bright.


On such a perfect day for travel, and since I didn't have to drive, I started my morning with a cuppa joe san soucci. Ahhhhh ... life is grande! Then, off to the train station where we discovered that The Mister has left his boarding passes back at the hotel. A quick cab ride back to the hotel (thankfully we were early to the station and the hotel was near by) to retrieve them. I put them with my passes in my purse since we all know that ladies rarely forget their purses.

After we secured our seats and tix were collected by the conductor we made our way up to the lounge car (aka dome car) so that we would have a maximum view. And, a spendid view indeed. Once we made it past Sacto we began our climb into the foothills, then the trek over the Sierra thru DonnerPass. The Mister, who loves playing the navigator with maps, used our GPS. Actually, two GPS sources: Garmin and Blackberry. Occassional clearings revealed glances of canyons and vistas of mountains. We had fabulous views of the sky with big, grey, rainy-looking clouds, to the streams, rivers, and forests below.


Also in the lounge car was the Loud Family vacation ... the adult children and their spouses traveling all the way to Chicago (a two day trip). They were so loud that we could not hear the "tour guide" tell about the sights of the trip. But, considering his voice was lack luster and rather sing song-like, sounding as if he were reading a script for the first time, I don't think we missed much. When the Loud brothers and sisters went to the diner car for lunch we could hear the docent quite well ... yup, we didn't miss too much.

The evening's events included a fine dinner (I had swordfish cooked to perfection and The Mister had prime rib) at the JA Nugget Casino and a Los Lonely Boys concert. The food was excellent and the performance was better. The Boys travel with an enterauge of family and friends. Before the show they went around the room handing out souvenir bookmarks and swag ... 100's of dollars in swag!

Tomorrow ... we head back home ... a second trip over Donne Pass. Now, for a good night's sleep