Saturday July 10th

A quick report from The Windy City, which was not at all windy, to which we were safely delivered at 6pm this afternoon by the California Zephyr. We left San Francisco at 9.50am on Thursday and enjoyed the trip across here enormously. We met some lovely people and saw some absolutely astounding scenery - it was one of Murray's more inspired ideas to travel by train rather than fly. As you can see from the following photos, the train was huge - nine double decker carriages (3 sleepers, 3 coach carriages, 1 dining carriage and 1 sightseer lounge pulled by 2 diesel locos, each over 2,400 horsepower (I hope the train buffs amongst you are impressed with this information!). We were in an upstairs sleeper.

The train travelled from San Francisco, along San Pueblo Bay, the Carquinez Strait and Suisan Bay to Sacramento. From here we travelled up into the Sierra Nevada and here the 'wow' moments started. This photo shows the America River from 1,500 feet above

We travelled through Salt Lake City during the night and then spent the morning travelling through the Utah desert, with its huge mesas and colours reminiscent of areas around Coober Pedy. 

The Colorado River runs through a series of canyons and mesas and as we travelled along we saw lots of kayakers and rafters travelling down the river.  Again, some wonderful scenery.

After this excitement we looked forward to the beginnings of the Rockies and we travelled through some great canyons and the Winter Park Ski Resort (winter temperatures of -50F and an elevation of 9,000 feet) as we made our way up to the Moffat Tunnel, a six mile long tunnel which cut the journey by 176 miles when it was opened in 1928.  The Continental Divide occurs in this tunnel. As the train made its way down to Denver from here it went through 29 tunnels and a steady 2% grade.

From Denver we travelled through the American mid-west & when we awoke on Saturdy morning we were well into farm areas - predominantly corn with some soy bean.  We crossed the Missouri River, which was in flood, passed through many small towns and eventually crossed the huge Mississippi River.  This area was not quite as flat as we had expected but SO green!
Arrived in Chicago at 5.40pm on Saturday.  The weather was lovely and warm so after we dumped our gear at the hotel we went for a wander - up and down the Magic Mile and around a few other streets but our description of this will have to wait until next time to do it justice. By then we wiull have done our Architecture Institute boat tour and will be much better informed about the beautiful buildings we saw.