Jaunt ’24 e

 Call this 2400 miles to the Barbary Coast from San Francisco .  This post gets us to the Barbary Coast shore, and next I’ll follow inland a bit. This follows on part d, as you might have seen here.  If you want vessels, there’ll even be some vessels here.  Keep in mind that vessels move on waters, and there’s plenty of water in some state here.  I’ll be fleet-footed.

There was music and dance in the square across from the LA Amtrak station.

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LA Amtrak station is elegant.

I didn’t sail the beautiful LA River, although the Southwest Chief sails over it.

Thompson had his Barstow experience;  mine was a short fresh air break after dark.  The thing about Amtrak routes:  the engineer speeds onward all through the night, and darkness obscures places and scenery.

Daybreak shows wild wet desert in St. John’s AZ, home of the Udalls and more.  

The train stopped in Gallup, also a Route 66 town.  

Iyanbito looks cold.  Smart phones’ knowing where a photo is taken is my lifesaver here.  A popint I’m trying to illustrate here is the amazing scenery a train passenger sees.

Farther east we pass Acoma Pueblo, identified by the smart phone.  Help me out here:  we can’t keep calling this all-purpose brainy tool a phone because phoning is one of the least frequent purposes it has  . . . at least for me.

In Albuqueque I left Amtrak and picked up a rental car.  At the station several RailRunners awaited.  It was rainy and a Monday, meaning museums were closed, so I headed north.

A serendipitous attraction was earthship, a community and a franchise in Tres Piedras. 

Whatever associations you have with the Rio Grande, you need to add its gorge.  The river below this bridge is 600′ down.

I drove into Alamosa CO at the end of this day.

I took a slight detour east and north to this unexpected place.  Snow on the dunes makes interesting pattern. 

Heading north to Salida on the “cosmic highway“, some really unexpected places involving aliens and alligators beckoned, but I pressed on.

There was Monarch Pass, the continental divide,  and then Grand Mesa, and of course I’m leaving lots out.

I ditched the rental on this town and boarded the California Zephyr westbound, about 24 hours back to the coast.

Again, the sights from the train are amazing, here

tubers on the Colorado River through Colorado National Monument.

Pronghorns (no picture) surprised me in Elmo UT, 

and sunset in Spring Glen meant I’d not see much of Salt Lake City or any of the Bonneville Salt, but that’s the Zephyr schedule.

Moonset found us in a very cold (21 F) Winnemucca NV.

Floriston is in Nevada county CA.  That’s the Truckee River.

Deep snow in Donner Pass made me happy I’m doing this trip in April.

Then down the foothills in Newcastle, and into the delta 

passing Sacramento, Saisun Bay, here with a lonely Cape Fear LASH, 

Vallejo with the soon to be replaced Golden Bear, 

an Oldendorff bulker named Eibe, and 

end of this segment of the line in Emeryville.

Next stop, new jaunt post . . . Barbary Coast.

All photos, any errors, WVD.  Any omissions were made in the interest of brevity;  it was 2400+ miles after all.

Jaunt ’24 c covered some of this same territory as the end of this post.

Enjoy the eclipse; where i am, it’ll be a 30%.