Two weeks in Chicago, not a single snowflake. Dire illness, bitter cold, yes. But no snow.
The day we leave? The remains of a massive ice storm, uncharacteristic for Chicago, pelts inches of crunchy snow at us as we trudge the three city blocks from Ogilvie Transportation Center to Union Station in Chicago, even unintentionally eliciting the aid of a friendly mother-son duo who insist on us letting them help us with our bags. We must look pretty pathetic. But that’s the Midwest for you–don’t try to be Superman, because if you do, someone is going to help you anyway.
After checking our bags and catching lunch with a dear friend, we wind our way through the recesses of Union Station, directed by the wonderfully patient security guards, to our platform.
We’re riding in the cheap seats, coach. We show a conductor our tickets on the platform, and he assigns us seats, writing their numbers and the station code of our destination on a small sheet of paper. We leave our larger carry-ons on a rack on the lower level and head up the stairs with our personal items. Ten minutes and a new seat assignment later, our remaining luggage is stowed overhead and we wait.
On a Superliner, the coach cars are directly behind the engines, with the lounge car and dining car in the middle, and the sleeper cars at the end. As a coach rider, the top floor is the party floor–not literally, but it’s where life happens. The cars are only linked via the top floor, and the lounge and dining car are on the upper level as well. The toilets are downstairs, and the snack bar is below the lounge car, but in the middle of winter the bottom floor is dark and drafty, convenient if you have difficulty on the steps, but dreary otherwise.
Our seat-assignment cards are clipped to the overhead luggage racks, and as we glance around, we notice a pattern. These are the long-haulers. The personalities occupying this car will be with us until Salt Lake or further. And, of course, our little man is the biggest personality of them all.
As the clock strikes 2PM, the train commences. As we pull out of the station, we're surrounded by graffitied walls and occasional glimpses of Chicago's industrial underbelly. We take the opportunity to scope out the snack bar's offerings and get acquainted with the family restroom downstairs.
Before long, the sun fades and the warehouses give way to field and hedges, all darkness outdoors save for the occasional obliging streetlamp or barnyard floodlight. In these moments, we see ice-encrusted twigs shimmering in the light, and the world is covered ever more thickly in nature's diamonds as the storm rages on.
Inside, we set into the dinner we've packed and then head down to the family restroom to start the bedtime routine and change into pajamas.
Sleeping on the train shouldn't be terrible, as we've brought a pillow to help us manage the little man on our laps, and the reclining seats are spacious and the foot rests are adjustable.
Except that it was pretty terrible, at least for Soren and I. Because the train stops throughout the night, an overhead light needs to stay on so that passengers can easily board and leave the train, and that light is perfectly positioned to shine its understated glare directly into our eyes. We finally rig up a little curtain using a scarf tied to the overhead baggage shelf, but while we are able to keep the little man quiet, it would be a stretch to call the night’s sleep “restful”.
Luckily, we didn’t opt for coach seats with a 5-month-old with expectations for a refreshing sleeping experience! When the little man wakes up, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed at 6AM, we rejoice in the fact that he is well rested, and stake out a table in the observation lounge, where the little man can babble to his heart’s delight and we can watch the sun come up.
As the day breaks, we’re in the outskirts of Denver. Every few hours, the train makes a long stop usually 20-30 minutes, during which restless passengers can get some fresh air (Or smoke. Mostly smoke.) We look longingly to the West, eager for the next stage of our journey: the mountains.
After what feels like hours, the train slowly pulls out of Denver, making its way through the rest of the city and back and forth across a series of huge switchbacks, pushing its way up the foothills of the Rocky Mountains. Once we’ve made the climb, we plunge into the mountains, quite literally–in the first 50 miles past Denver, there are 31 tunnels on the Zephyr’s route, culminating in the 6.2-mile Moffat Tunnel. There is a reason why tunnels this long are rare, aside from the practicality of building them, of course: there is no way to properly circulate the air at the heart of the mountain. Thus, our conductors make it exhaustively clear that we need to refrain from moving between cars to avoid bringing toxic fumes on board.
Between these tunnels, the scenery changes. No longer are we looking out over the vast Plains of middle America–now we are skating along the sides of ever-taller peaks, deep green forests dotting their slopes and vast blue lakes gracing their valleys. The horizon is a distant memory as these gargantuan hills surround us, and all concept of scale is lost.
Still we continue, and a few miles after Moffat Tunnel we join up with the Colorado River, our constant companion through the Rockies. Our route follows this unassuming trickle of water through gorges and across alpine expanses. Bolderous outcroppings, distant snow caps and layered red rocks each take their turns in dominating our surroundings, our trusty river ever by our side. We catch a glimpse of eagles, nesting in a tree along its shore, and extensive networks of snow tracks indicate that they’re not the only living creatures in this cold, wild place.
Dotted along the way are little hamlets and hidden winter parks. Back in our seats by now, Soren and I take turns holding the little man while he naps, and read him books when he wakes up. When he gets really antsy, we take him for walks or hold him over our heads so that he can use his coos and smiles to win over the hearts of our neighbors. This works wonderfully to cheer him up, except for when he tries to swoon the young ladies across the aisle–they don’t fall for him, and he turns back to us, wailing in disappointment over his unrequited affections. This happens at least half a dozen times, but his delicate feelings are salvaged by the appreciative encouragement from other passengers who had slept peacefully the night before.
We claim another table in the observation car and soon find ourselves in conversation with a woman who regularly rides the rails because of its environmental sustainability. We all agree that we love this space because it is bright and cheery–essentially the train’s patio, the best place to enjoy the sights. The scenery isn’t the only thing worth watching here–we also have the opportunity to observe the train’s strongest characters in their finest. Whether it’s the outgoing, market-speculating retiree, the ultra-liberal evangelist, the lego-building family, the thoughtful watercolorist, or that one guy who decides that this, of all places, is the prime spot for a nap, this is where the people of the train congregate, and it’s lovely.
Almost as soon as the foothills are behind us, the sun fades and we commence the nightly ritual of the diaper-change, pajamas, and ear-infection-fighting antibiotics downstairs. The family bathroom was definitely a godsend–it allowed Soren and I to tag-team on managing the little man and getting ourselves changed (which not everyone does, but it’s fantastic for morale). It’s really nothing fancy, though. The restrooms can probably be best described as a cross between an airplane restroom and a port-a-potty. They’re small (the family one has an extra tiny room attached) and have wall handles so that you don’t fall over on the next bend or bump in the tracks, but sometimes they’re great, sometimes they stink, and sometimes they’re missing...something. The germaphobe would likely want to bring their own supply of hand sanitizer (and maybe a small roll of toilet paper or wet wipes, if they’re really grossed out by things), but we had a ready stock of helpful items in the diaper bag, so we were able to adapt easily when there were shortages.
Night Number Two is not quite as smooth as the first, however the little man has already skillfully charmed our neighbors, so nobody seems to hold it against us too much. In my own restlessness, I decide that I’d love to do this trip again in the summer–the longer days would allow us to see twice as much scenery our December adventure, and I’m endlessly curious about what is outside the window.
We opt to have a hot breakfast in the dining car on our last day, and we enjoy both the food and the company. One of our companions has a friend who lives near Reno and calls her to see if they can meet up at one of the stops. As she runs toward her car to prepare to catch her friend, we stare in awe as the foothills of the Sierras rise around us, the early morning sun dressing them in every shade of pink.
The Sierra Nevada is special to both of us–it was the first big, snowy mountain range that either of us had ever experienced. The Sierras are not jagged or fragile–they are vast granite monoliths covered in ancient green forests. We stare lovingly through the window for hours, enjoying views of forested valleys and cloud-topped peaks opposite us. We enjoy the patterns of wetter, heavier snow that covers our surroundings as we wonder whether there have ever been any other mountains as breathtaking as these.
Such joy, however, cannot last forever. Before long, the little man decides that he is very much done with trains, and we discover that one of our phones was uploading photos via 3G last night. By the time we leave these gorgeous mountains, we are taking deep breaths and reading all of the children’s books we’ve brought, over and over, and then resorting to the little man’s favorite downtime activity, selfies.
By the time we meet the water’s edge, the flurry of activity has begun–the final destination approaches, and we will soon say farewell to our compatriots and join our loved ones in Emeryville. We gather our belongings. Soren helps a Monterey native order his first Uber car. We take one last trip to the family restroom. And we soak in our final moments on this wonderful adventure, having discovered that our backup flight (the one we'd scheduled in case we chickened out of the train plan) was cancelled due to the Chicago ice storms. We are overjoyed that we chose to spend our time seeing some of the best of America, because the alternative would have involved plenty of waiting and dangerous driving, but no mountains to enjoy or new people to charm or crazy faces in the bathroom mirror to giggle at. We are so glad that we decided to do this crazy thing.
And then, in the blink of an eye, we have arrived, completely confused as to where to find our checked bags, but excited for the little man to finally meet FarMor and FarFar, 51 hours after departing from an icy Chicago.
A Merry Christmas indeed!
