... Time magazine recently did a profile of America's top high-tech cities, which noted that even with the shaky economy, Oakland has been extremely successful in attracting new business. They credited Mayor Brown with helping to shake Oakland's image as a decaying, crime-ridden place and transform it into a vital, modern city. Having seen things up close, I would certainly say that transformation is not completed. Oakland obviously has come a long way, though.
We followed Interstate 80 through Berkeley and Richmond. The driver made more cracks about liberals in Berkeley, and I must say I was more tempted to agree with his point of view here. I am quite offended by the self-dubbed "liberal" censors who have cropped up recently in places like Berkeley. I consider myself a liberal (though my personal life is quite conservative), but I define that quite differently than the champions of political correctness. To me there is no greater right than the right to free speech. There are a lot of things that offend me, but I would never seek to ban them. I believe it was Voltaire who said "I may disagree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." While I would hope people would be careful with their words and actions, I am absolutely opposed to forced censorship of any sort. I cannot understand how people who call themselves "liberal" can justify silencing the voices of those with whom they disagree. Unfortunately that seems to be taken for granted at almost every college these days. It's as if those who were oppressed have become oppressors themselves. Colleges should be a place where free speech is celebrated-where people can discuss all sides of any topic freely. I recall the words of President Ford: "We can disagree without being disagreeable." I would hope everyone--and especially those who would put limits on free speech--would take those words to heart.
We passed lots and lots of expensive new suburban neighborhoods set among dry, barren hills. As we drove along I noticed the rest of the traffic on this eight-lane freeway. What amazed me was that absolutely every vehicle--without a single exception--had a California license plate. Even the trucks were local. I don't think I've ever been on one of the expressways in Chicagoland without seeing several out-of-state plates (and, of course, my plates would not have been local either. Many times I've even seen California plates around the Windy City. No one was driving an Illinois car out here, though--nor even one from neighboring Arizona, Oregon, or Nevada. It seemed all the more amazing given that this was Interstate 80, America's "Main Street" that leads all the way across the country. I would think California would get a lot of tourists, but I guess most of them must not drive here.
We passed Crockett, an old town that is home to the C&H (California and Hawaii) sugar refinery. Crockett is in Contra Costa County, a place whose local pronunciation grated on my ears. They pronounced "Contra" as "CONN-truh" like the Nicaraguan freedom fighters and "Costa" as "CAH-stuh" like sportscaster Bob Costas. It surprised me that such an easily pronounced Spanish phrase (CONE-trah COAST-ah) and one that has an obvious meaning (against the coast) would be so badly slaughtered. At Crockett we crossed the Sacramento River to Vallejo. I can't really tell you how to pronounce "Vallejo", because I heard it pronounced several different ways. Some people closely approximated the Spanish--"buy-YAY-hoe", while others said it more like "vuh-LAY-hoe". The "j" was always the correct Spanish "h" sound, but the rest of the word changed around.
There was a toll plaza in Vallejo. The bus went through an automated lane, but we had to slow down to almost nothing to go through. That hardly seemed like any particular advantage over throwing change into the basket. Just past the toll plaza was an exit that featured a single business that combined a Shell station, a McDonalds restaurant, and a Starbucks coffee bar under one roof. Starbucks is really big out here. I really don't understand why. Every restaurant in California makes strong, flavorful coffee. All Starbucks really has over even the fast food places here is its name. It seems silly to me that someone would pay $3.75 for something that they could get for $1. (Then again, as I sit hear writing this I'm wearing Tommy Hilfiger shorts and Adidas shoes, so I guess I shouldn't be making cracks about paying for names.)
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One thing that is strange about California's freeways is that their exits are never numbered. Most states (like Iowa) number exits after the corresponding mile number. A few (mostly in the East) number them sequentially. Whenever I drive, I look for exit numbers more than I do the highway numbers or street names. (I could tell you, for instance, that the main exit in Coralville is #242 and the main one in Ankeny is #92, but I have no idea what the names of the corresponding streets are. Similarly, I know that if I want to take the 'L' into Chicago, the park-and-ride is at Exit 21-A on the Eisenhower Expressway, but I couldn't tell you what street that exit is for.) In California, people just talk about the "Hollywood Boulevard Exit", the "59th Street Exit", or (away from the cities) "the Hooterville Exit". I would hate driving without exit numbers, but I supposed you get used to whatever is familiar.
Vallejo was essentially the end of metropolitan San Francisco. Past there the scenery rapidly became rural. Even so, there was still a lot of traffic. I-80 continued to be eight lanes wide in what seemed to be the middle of nowhere, and all those lanes were needed.
We exited onto American Canyon Road. We made our way west to the town of American Canyon (named after the American River), where the Napa County Chamber of Commerce has its official welcome center. We stopped here for our first tasting, which featured wines from smaller producers around the region. I was amused on entering the visitors center that there message board had the greeting "Have a grape day!" How appropriate for the wine country.
I had assumed that at a wine tasting you would sample similar wines, to figure out which you liked best. Oh, no! We followed the etiquette our instructional video had given us. At each tasting we started off by tasting a white wine. That was followed by a red wine, and it was all topped off by a dessert wine. My cynical side wonders if that etiquette might not have been developed by the vintners themselves, so that you couldn't see how one producer's wine differed in quality from the competition. Most people tend to prefer one kind of wine (red, white, etc.), and that would almost certainly stand out when the wines they were being compared to were the ones they didn't like.
You certainly wouldn't get drunk at a wine tasting; "taste" would be a generous description for the couple of drops they put in each glass. The good part was that the tastings were included in the tour price (normally they charge a fee ranging from $2 to $10, depending on the winery). So I grabbed a glass and tried my best to act like I knew what I was dong as I sampled wine that was definitely expensive and supposedly good.
We followed California highway 29 northward from American Canyon. This is basically a four-lane street. The communities in the area are really just overgrown small towns, but "overgrown" is definitely the word--lots of people live around here, and traffic is extremely heavy. It's only about 15 miles from American Canyon to Napa, but it took over half an hour to get there.
While it is very populated, this is still farm country. "Vineyards" is the official name for what we saw beside the road. Really, though, that's just the pretentious word for "grape farm". ... Farms may look a little strange when they have support fences for the rows of grape vines to grow on, but they're still farms.
As on all farms, weather is a major concern here. The biggest concern is cold. Many fields had big fans in the middle of them. They turn those on if freezing weather threatens. The circulating air warms things just enough to keep the grapes from being ruined. Other fields had smudge pots like you see in pictures every time the weather gets cold in the orchards of Florida.
The local farmers apparently complained about yesterday's rain. It was hardly enough to cause flooding, but apparently any rain in summer can cause mold to grow on the grape leaves. Many of the farms were spraying today to kill that mold. It intrigued me that the farmers who were out on tractors spraying their fields were all wearing protective clothing (more than you'd see from people spraying herbicide here), but the migrants who were working in the fields had no special protection at all.
While those migrants are certainly better off than they were before the days of Cesar Chavez, you could certainly make a good case that they are exploited. Our driver told us that migrant labor is piecework. The laborers are paid by the "tray". One tray holds 40 - 50 pounds of grapes, and the migrants are paid about $1.50 per tray. The grapes are then sold to the wineries by the ton. The minimum price for a ton of grapes is around $1,500, and organically grown grapes can bring over $3,000 per ton. If you do the math, the migrants are receiving around $67 a ton. I have no idea what other expenses are involved in growing grapes. It's obviously more complex than growing beans, corn, or even cotton, but I can't imagine that $3,000 a ton wouldn't be quite a tidy profit.
Grapes are the largest crop in California. The majority of grapes actually don't end up in wine. Most either become juice (the unfermented kind) or raisins. The city of Fresno has the world's largest raisin processing facility, and there are a lot of juice bottlers all over California. There's no particular difference between wine grapes and those intended for juice, raisins, or the table, except that wine grapes are more carefully classified by variety.
We passed through the city of Napa, and north of there the landscape got much more wooded. Around11am we made a photo stop right next to a vineyard. I was interested when we stopped to find that ours was what is called a "kneeling bus". That is, when the bus stops, the front end lowers to provide less of a step up from the ground to the bus itself. I had never seen one of those before, and on a tour that was heavy on the elderly, I'm sure it was a good idea.
At 11:20 we stopped for our second tasting at the Trinchero Family Wineries. That homey name disguises what is actually the world's second largest winemaker, the people who produce the Sutter Home line of wines that you'll find in every grocery store in the country. Several people on the tour scoffed that we were tasting such plebian wine, and a large amount of it ended up in the dump crocks by the bar. I'm sure I'm giving away just how uncouth I am, but I found the Sutter's Home wnes to be the most enjoyable of the ones we tasted. I could see why their white zinfandel (a sweet and fruity "blush" wine) was the best-selling wine in the world.
The Trinchero employees gave us a fascinating history of the place, which included the rather strange history of white zinfandel. Although it's tasty, I could see why the connoisseurs objected to being asked to sample it. The stuff is probably best described as a grape by-product, in the same way that dogfood is related to but not the same thing as meat. The recipe relies heavily on grape skins and pulp that are leftover from making "good" red wine. Until the accidental invention of white zinfandel, that stuff would have gone into animal feed. They freely admit that white zinfandel costs almost nothing to make and is by far their most profitable wine.
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Trinchero was quite interesting, but we spent way too long there--over an hour all together. The actual wine tasting took maybe ten minutes, with another ten devoted to their corporate history. That left more than half an hour with nothing to do but browse through the gift shop. I have no idea why we stopped so long here.
When we finally boarded the bus again, we passed through a series of lovely old resorts. The most elegant of these was St. Helena. The landscape was mostly wooded around this area, with the highway shaded by a lovely canopy of oaks. While the countryside is pretty, it is also quite pricey. The driver told us that land here goes for $112,000 an acre. It was kind of strange, given the expensive land and the lovely setting, that most of the houses in the area were small and dumpy. I'd think if someone could afford to buy land at those jacked-up prices, they could also afford to build a nice home.
We stopped for lunch in the resort community of Calistoga, which was named after Saratoga, New York. The driver had at length recommended three restaurants from which I'm sure he gets kickbacks. Margaret and I chose to ignore his recommendations. We instead made our way to a place called "Hydro", which was sort of a combination bar-and-grill and pretentious bistro. We had quiche (which I'm sure is passe by now, but I still think of as elegant), together with a snooty salad and a delicious quesadilla platter with fruit salsa. I also had iced tea, which had a slightly minty flavor to it and was excellent.
Since we didn't have to compete for service with the rest of the bus, we finished our lunch quickly and had lots of time to go out exploring. Calistoga is really quite a nice little town. It still functions as a resort for the upper crust, and you see some of those people around. Most of the people who actually live here, though, are the children or grandchildren of migrants who chose to settle for good in northern California. That was confirmed by the local newspaper, which had a special feature on graduation at the local high school (in late June). The largest class in C.H.S. history included 121 students, 80 of whom had Spanish surnames.
There was one very odd thing we noticed in the graduation supplement. Just like the local paper does here, this one had the senior pictures of all the local graduates. What was weird was that almost every boy had his senior picture taken in a tuxedo. I hope that fad doesn't catch on around here. I far prefer the senior pictures that reflect the kids' personalities (the ones where they display their sports uniforms or their motorcycle or their favorite outfit). Almost no one looks like themselves in a tux, and it seems a really odd choice for a "memory" shot.
We stopped in at CAL-Mart, a local grocery store. This was definitely not like the IGA or Super-Valu you'd find in a similarly sized town in Iowa. The merchandise tended toward gourmet, and nearly a third of the store was devoted to produce. They also had an entire aisle of Mexican food, but almost nothing of other international cuisines (just the basic LaChoy noodles, for instance). Margaret found the prices very expensive. It was harder for me to judge. I do the bulk of my grocery shopping at Aldi, and anything else is expensive by comparison. Except for meat and dairy products, things really didn't seem much higher than they would be at Hy-Vee. The big thing I noticed was that everything was name brand; they didn't have a house brand or generic version of anything. I picked up some miniature doughnuts at CAL-Mart, which we snacked on through the afternoon. Margaret bought a coffee cake that we enjoyed on the train ride back.
We left Calistoga at 12:25 and followed the tree-lined Silverado Trail. Along here the driver called our attention to caves which some of the wineries use to age their red wines. We turned south and followed highway 121 into the city of Napa, which is by far the largest place in the area. Napa is a pleasant middle-class city of 60,000 souls that looks like a similarly sized place would anywhere. Aside from being the industrial center of the wine country, their claim to fame is that the loudspeaker was invented here. There's even a big monument shaped like a loudspeaker commemorating that fact downtown. There was an earthquake last year during which Napa suffered significant damage. We saw several buildings that were still damaged and others that were under repair as we passed by.
Our main afternoon stop was at the Mt. St. John Winery in the southwestern part of the Napa Valley. Mt. St. John is a small winery that uses only organically grown grapes. We had a complete tour of the winery, where the very casual owner described the winemaking process in detail. Pretty much nothing was happening at the winery. Summer is basically when grapes grow, so there wasn't much to see. We snapped pictures of the steel fermentation tanks and the oak aging barrels (which are used only for red wine, not white), and the owner was able to make things seem interesting--even when nothing much was going on.
Our final stop of the day was in the Sonoma Valley, at a place called the Viansa Winery and Italian Marketplace. The pseudo-Italian name is actually nothing more than a contraction of "Vicky and Sam", the owners' names. The whole place was just about as authentically "olde worlde". The one interesting thing at Viansa was their selection of snacks. In addition to wines, all the wineries had various sauces for sale. Invariably they have samples available, with pretzels or crackers that you can dip to get a taste. The other places had three or four such sauces, but Viansa had at least twenty. Some were vinegar-based (basically glorified salad dressings) while others were like chocolate or butterscotch syrup. Both Margaret and I would have liked to have bought a collection of assorted sauces. Unfortunately, nothing of the sort was for sale. You had to buy wine-bottle sized portions of individual sauces, or nothing at all. Their failing to provide a variety pack lost them at least two sales.
Sonoma is much drier than Napa, and to my mind not nearly so pretty. That surprised me, since the Sonoma Valley is right along the coast. I would think the sea breezes would moisten Sonoma, but leave Napa dry. In fact, though, it's the other way around. I guess that's why I'm not a meteorologist.
We came back through Marin County, which has the highest average household income in California. It's a fascinating combination of elegant homes and tacky minimalls. We made a photo stop at Ft. Baker in Sausalito so everyone could snap the obligatory picture of the Golden Gate Bridge. I'm not quite sure why people marvel so much at that bridge. It looks pretty much the same as every other suspension bridge in the world. It's in a pretty setting, but I personally prefer the Verrazano Narrows Bridge, with the skyscrapers of Manhattan in the background. (That said, I must confess that I, too, snapped that obligatory photo of the Golden Gate.)
As we crossed the Golden Gate Bridge, the driver noted--somewhat less than subtly--that "gratuities are left to your discretion". He also said he would be leaving people off at their hotels. This caused a problem for one woman on the tour who didn't remember which hotel she was staying at. She knew it was a Holiday Inn, but San Francisco (like pretty much every city in the world) has at least a dozen different Holiday Inns. Apparently she had just arrived this morning by plane, gone straight to the hotel by cab, and then immediately taken the Wine Country tour before even checking into the hotel. I learned from taking cabs in Spain that you should always know the full name of your hotel--and preferably its address or a nearby landmark, too. It amazed me that this woman didn't even have her reservation confirmation with the name of the hotel. Eventually another passenger remembered where she had gotten on, so things worked out okay in the end.
We caught a glimpse of one last "must see" attraction in San Francisco: Lombard Street. This is the self-proclaimed "crookedest street in the world". The street (which for most of its length is arrow-straight, six-lane U.S, 101) has a one-block section that features eight curves down a steep hill. I grew up hearing people call Snake Alley in Burlington the "crookedest street in the world". They are really quite similar streets, both brick-paved and lined with Victorian homes. I'm not sure who takes the "crookedest" honors (especially since "crookedest" isn't even a word), but whichever it is, I can say I've seen it.
I got one more laugh out of the driver as we neared the hotels by Fisherman's Wharf. He remarked at how remarkably uncrowded the area was, "we had a major convention here last weekend, but things have really emptied out since then". He had chosen his words carefully; somehow "Queerific" isn't what comes to mind when you think of a "major convention".
Almost everyone on the bus was staying at ritzy hotels in San Francisco. (The Holiday Inn would be about the bottom of the range.) They deliver only to hotels in the city, so Margaret and I could not expect door-to-door service. We had assumed we would be going back to the Transbay Terminal, but the driver actually let us off right at the Embarcadero BART station. A couple who lived in the area were the only other people on the bus to get off there.
Sitting across from us on the train were two college kids who were discussing hiking in Africa. It would be hard to find a more unlikely pair discussing that topic. I could almost picture the boy having done some serious hiking (though it would be a stretch), but I have a feeling the girl (a blonde who was cute, but hardly athletic) would find it strenuous to walk from one end of a mall to the other. The boy asked if she had good boots, and she responded with something like, "Oh yeah, I've been meaning to get them." She seemed similarly uninformed about just about everything else that might have to do with hiking, mountain climbing, or the African continent. I wonder if she hadn't just made up a story about going to Africa as a way of flirting with the guy.
We decided to have dinner tonight in Jack London Square. Deciding that much was easy; deciding on the actual restaurant was tough. There were probably twenty restaurants within a short walk of our hotel, but none of them seemed to excite both Margaret and me. My choice would have been a pasta place, while Margaret was leaning toward seafood. We checked out the menu of those, as well as seven or eight other places before finally settling on a chain we could have found in any city n America, T.G.I. Friday's. While I've seen these lots of places, I had never actually been in one before. They're really surprisingly nice--a bit on the loud side, but very nice food and pleasant service. I had French onion soup and some excellent marinated steak kabobs. It really made a very nice dinner.
We returned to the hotel, packed our bags for the last time, and then settled in for our final night in California.
As is often true when traveling, I was up quite early this morning. We finished packing quickly, checked out of the hotel, and wheeled our luggage down the Embarcadero (much more pleasant in daytime) to the Amtrak station. At about 7:25 we boarded our first train of the day, the San Jaoquin.
While Oakland is by far the largest city in the East Bay, it has no rail yard and would not serve well as a true terminal. The cross-country trains leave from Emeryville, a tiny suburb at the foot of the Bay Bridge just north of Oakland. Trains between the two stations (which then connect to more distant points beyond them) run roughly hourly. It's about a ten-minute ride from Oakland to Emeryville, with a less than beautiful view of the port en route.
Because we were not going any distance at all, Margaret and I sat in the handicapped seats, which were right beside the doors on the lower level of the brand new coach. These were arranged on opposite sides of a small table, sort of like the dinette in a trailer. The difference was that there was space here for a wheelchair to sit at the table, which meant that there was a huge gap between the chairs and the table. I was able to put my luggage between me and the table with plenty of room to spare.
We made it to Emeryville with nearly two hours to spare before our "real" train left. To kill time we made our way to the nearby Emeryville Marketplace, a gentrified warehouse that is mostly full of food vendors but also features a Borders bookstore. Almost everything there was closed until 9:30 or 10:00, but we were able to have coffee and bagels at a place called Hannah's Cookies. We had a very leisurely breakfast, and by the time we finished, it was nearly time for our train to board.
We boarded the California Zephyr at 9:25am. Our car attendant was a black woman originally from Baltimore who remarked when she saw our tickets that she thought Mt. Pleasant was "just the nicest little town". I can't argue with her. It's just about the only place I'd seriously consider moving to if I left here.
The train left at 9:45, already 10 minutes late at its terminal. Shortly after we started moving the chief of onboard services (the person in charge of the car attendants, who was another black woman) announced that they had not been given any pillowcases in Emeryville. Government regulations forbid them to pass out pillows without pillowcases, so she was not able to give us any pillows. They hoped that they would be able to get pillowcases in Reno so we would have them before nightfall.
We traveled right along the bay through Berkeley and Richmond. Our first stop was at Martinez (mar-TEEN-us). As we neared there the conductor (a black man; almost the entire crew on the Zephyr was black) announced it repeatedly. He also told us it was the birthplace of such famous people as Joe DiMaggio. Then he added, "Martinez is also the birthplace of Joe Jennel ... that's my son."
The conductor was the only crew member (except probably the engineer) who was from California. Amtrak conductors do not travel the whole distance of the train. Instead they stay "fresh", by only going a day's journey at a time. Mr. Jennel went with us to Reno (actually Sparks, which is just east of Reno). Another conductor went from there to Grand Junction, a third across Colorado to Denver, a fourth to Omaha, and a fifth would go on to Chicago. The rest of the crew is all based in the same city. On the Southwest Chief, everyone was from Los Angeles. The Coast Starlight crew was from Seattle, and the Zephyr was staffed out of Chicago. The long-distance western crews work six-day shifts, making a return trip between the Midwest and California. Normally they have three days of between shifts, but every few shifts they get nine days off.
Martinez is sort of a transitional place. Mostly it's a ratty little farm town, but it's obviously well on its way to becoming a suburb. We got a lengthy view of the place as we paused twice for freight trains. One of those stops was on a very rickety that did not inspire much confidence. While we were waiting on the bridge we saw an enormous ship (the Long Beach) just to the north. I'm sure it was headed to the port with a load of cargo containers.
We crossed the Sacramento River at Martinez, and almost immediately the landscape became very rural. The land around here is surprisingly swampy. Much of it is wasteland, but there are canals dug all over the place. Around Davis we started seeing the same sort of vegetable farms we had seen south of San Jose--with lettuce, tomatoes, artichokes, garlic, and the like. It started raining again past Davis, and at times the rain was fairly heavy. This is apparently unusual, since all the fields around here have irrigation devices
We reached Sacramento at 11:35am, and we made a very long stop there. Sacramento is obviously one of the most important Amtrak stops in California. Not only is it the state capital (and a big city in its own right), but there's a major bus to rail connection that brings people in from the more remote parts of the state. Lots of people boarded at Sacramento, and from there onward the train was essentially full.
The most interesting group that boarded at Sacramento was an Amish family that sat about four rows behind us. They wore traditional dress and were almost totally silent, but in some ways they were surprisingly modern. The two boys had a very simple battery-operated video game, for instance, and at one point I saw the father reading a car magazine. They also had no problem consuming the microwaved food in the lounge car.
Another interesting character was a man some of the other passengers referred to as "the colonel". He was a withered old man who was apparently returning home from a convention of the V.F.W. or some similar organization. Throughout the entire trip he wore his name tag from that convention, identifying himself as a veteran. I certainly have nothing against those who have served our country, but it seemed more than a bit odd to me to wear that name tag for three straight days.
Yet another of our fellow passengers was a twenty-something man who happened to be blind. The first couple of times he walked through the train, he did so with assistance from fellow passengers. He soon developed confidence, though, and before long he was walking to the lounge, the diner, and the smoking car on his own. I worried a bit about him as he crossed between cars. The footing there is very uneven. He negotiated that and everything else without any problem, though.
By the time we left Sacramento there were lots of children in our car. I don't dislike children, but I really don't care for traveling long distances with them. Most of these kids were not too badly behaved (indeed, often their parents were worse), but the whole experience was less than ideal. A baby behind us frequently cried, and his cry was very shrill and piercing to my ears. There was also a little girl in front of us who was having trouble adjusting the pressure in her ears as we went up into the mountains.
We left Sacramento at 11:55. Shortly thereafter Margaret and I went to the dining car for lunch. This was one of the most silent meals I have ever eaten. Our companions were a mother and son. They were obviously very wealthy, and the boy came across as a spoiled brat. Except for a complaining a couple of times, neither of them really said much of anything through the entire meal. I had a Monte Cristo sandwich, which is basically a ham and cheese. Margaret had a burger and then strawberry shortcake for dessert. Dinner seemed to take forever, yet we were basically in Sacramento from start to finish. The city just goes on forever. Even Roseville, the next stop to the east, is really just another part of greater Sacramento.
One of the best features of the California Zephyr is the "entertainment", which consists of narration on the intercom as you pass through beautiful and/or interesting areas. As we entered the Sierra Nevada Mountains, a narrator from the California Railroad Museum in Sacramento gave a running commentary. He talked about the scenery, the process of building the first railroad over the mountains (this was the western leg of the first transcontinental railroad), the gold rush, and the western pioneers.
The route of the railroad (and also of I-80) is over infamous Donner Pass. Without using words like "cannibalism", the guide described the difficulties the Emigrant Party faced as they headed west. The guide told us that 35 feet of snow is typical here in an average winter, so it was certainly no surprise that the early settlers got caught in it. What surprised me, given all that annual snow, was that the mountains here were not snow-capped. I found it even more surprising given that the some of the mountains down by Los Angeles did still have some snow in June. The term "Sierra Nevada" basically means "Snowy Mountains", so it surprised me that these in no way fit that description in summer.
The lower part of the Sierra Nevadas are very heavily populated. I-80 continues to be eight lanes well past Sacramento, and it's six lanes until almost the top of the pass. Part of that is to allow truck traffic to move more efficiently, but it's also because the traffic continues to be very heavy. There are towns everywhere, and while none of them are large, all of them together add up to a lot of people. High up in the mountains there was less development, but still more people than in any other mountain area I've ever been to.
It grew continually wetter as we rose higher and higher. The further we got into the mountains, the greener the scenery got. Everything was heavily tree-covered, and eventually the deciduous trees gave way to pines. There were wildflowers next to the track. The guide told us that near the top of the pass they get 65 inches of rain a year, and all that precipitation made for some of the most gorgeous mountain scenery I've ever seen.
We went through tunnel after tunnel after tunnel after tunnel as we crossed the Sierras. Around 1:30 we stopped in the dumpy little town of Colfax. The depot there was roped off, and I tried to figure out whether they were restoring it or tearing it down. Beyond Colfax we passed a series of snow sheds, concrete roofs built over the tracks to prevent avalanches. I remember reading all about these when we visited Yoho National Park in Canada. Up there they also have some snow sheds over the highway.
Around 3:15 reached what they call "the Big Hole", the Mt. Judah Tunnel. At 7,040 feet this is the highest point the train gets to in the Sierras-nearly as high as we were anywhere on the Southwest Chief. The tunnel is two miles long. We were in it for 3 minutes and 35 seconds, and by the time we came out the other side, I was getting nauseous from diesel fumes.
We stopped briefly in Truckee, an ugly old mountain town with brand new strip malls and warehouses on its edge. Just east of there we reached the site of a recent major forest fire. The fire had burned out of control for nearly a week, destroying millions of acres in California and Nevada. For a time both the railroad and the interstate were closed because of the flames. As of today the fire was 60% under control. 2,400 firefighters continued to fight it, some from as far away as Montana. The fire brigade included 242 engines, 12 air tankers, and 16 helicopters, and to date it had cost $5 million. The cause of the fire was officially unknown, but the guide implied it was probably arson. We reached the burn area around 4:05. We didn't see flames (thank goodness), but we did see plenty of totally charred trees. In an area that could be extremely beautiful, we saw mostly destruction. It was much drier on the eastern side of the pass, and I could see how the fire could spread so quickly.
As we headed through the mountains a problem developed with the door between our car and the next coach up. To get between two cars on a train, you have to go through two doors. On Amtrak you press a button on the door of the rear car, and it opens with a whoosh. You then step onto a support above the coupling mechanism between the cars and press a similar button on the door of the forward car. It opens with another whoosh, and you can move forward. People do this routinely every time they go to the lounge or the smoking car. Unfortunately, the mechanisms that worked our door got stuck on open. What happened was that someone opened the door as we were going around a tight curve. I think the door got jammed in there on the curve, and it wouldn't close. There were three main problems with having the door open. First, a good deal of outside air came into the car. The air conditioning couldn't compensate, and it rapidly became quite warm. Secondly, we got a lot of annoying track noise. Finally every time we went through a tunnel or snow shed the diesel fumes came in through that open door. It really was not a pleasant experience.
Both the car attendant and the conductor attempted to fix the door at different points. Both of them got it working temporarily, but each time the exact same thing would happen. Someone would open the door as we were going around a tight curve, and it would get stuck open. The problem persisted throughout most of the trip.
We reached the Nevada border at about 4:30pm. Rapidly it became very dry. I had been through this part of Nevada once before, on a trip back from visiting my Aunt Alaire in Seattle. I remember it as a desolate, God-forsaken place. It hasn't changed much.
About the time we entered Nevada the dining steward, a black woman named Carla, came on the intercom to announce the dinner menu. Her accent had not advanced much from the South Side, with numerous mispronunciations. Most amusing was her statement that the chef's special tonight would be a "Seafood Melody". She meant "medley", of course, but I pictured karaoke night in the fish tank. "Under the Sea" from The Little Mermaid kept going through my head the rest of the day.
We reached Reno at 4:45. The outskirts of the city alternate between lovely new residential areas and hideous mine tailings. Soon we got downtown and passed another landmark from Sister Act, the famous "Biggest Little City in the World" arch that spans Virginia Street. We stopped just past there, with a casino on one side of us and a place called the French Quarter Gentlemen's Club to the other. Several gentlemen went into the club while we were stopped, as did some ladies of questionable repute. The governor of that state north of us freely admits that when he was still Jim Janos he would go to Reno for a legal good time with the ladies of the night. While this "gentlemen's club" may have just been a strip joint, it would certainly not surprise me if there was more going on there than that.
At 5pm we stopped again in Sparks, Nevada. Sparks is essentially part of Reno, and there would certainly be no reason from a passenger's point of view to stop in both places. Sparks, though, is a service stop for the train. They re-stock the diner, water the engine, and double check to make sure all systems are still "go" after making it over the first set of mountains. The Sparks station is located in the middle of an enormous rail yard where it's easy to do all that servicing. I'm not sure anyone got on or off here, but we were in Sparks for a good 15 minutes.
I got off and walked down the platform to buy a newspaper. It was very hot out. I had thought it was hot with in our coach with the warm air leaking in from outside. At full strength, though, the outside heat was downright miserable. Say what you will about the desert heat being "a dry heat". When it's in the 90s, hot is hot, and it was hot in Sparks.
We reached the high desert east of Sparks. The mountains were bone dry. In places they had absolutely no vegetation, and those plants that did grow were scraggly brush at best. It's not at all pretty country, and it doesn't really seem to be good for much of anything. I could see why they did nuclear testing here; it's not like the blasts would be disturbing much of anything. The one positive thing I have to say about the area is that the sun made a few interesting shadows on the mountain peaks.
Around 6:45 the landscape started to change. First we saw some irrigated fields. We were pondering where they got irrigation water in the middle of the desert when we saw natural trees. We were traveling through an area called the Humboldt Sink. It's flat as a pancake and appears bone dry on the surface. There's water just below the surface, though, which makes it easy to farm. The sink is huge, and it's surrounded by towering mountains that give definition to its shape.
Once again we were paralleling interstate 80. Traffic was light--mostly trucks--and I got the feeling that we in the train were racing with traffic. We were winning that race, too. We weren't going a lot faster than traffic, but it was definitely faster. I'm not sure what the speed limit is in Nevada, but I'm sure it's at least 75.
We passed out of the Humboldt Sink and into an area of bare white mountains around 7:15. All around this area the land was fenced. I can't imagine why you'd need fences in the middle of nowhere. I can't imagine this being even marginal grazing land, nor can I imagine why you'd care if anyone trespassed on the property. Whatever the reason, though, everything was fenced.
At 7:40 we got to Winnemucca, now just 15 minutes late. The houses here are all pre-fab, but they do have one thing going for them over the mansions in California. At least in Nevada people have substantial lots. I'd hardly call them "yards" when there was no grass to be seen anywhere, but at least everyone had space on all sides of their home.
The sun was rapidly setting, and by 8pm it was too dark to read without turning on the overhead light. Nevada is technically in Pacific Time, but we were far to the east end of that time zone. I'm used to sunset coming at 9:30 in Iowa in summer, so 8pm seemed shockingly early.
The landscape became swampy east of Winnemucca. We were following the Humboldt River, which is barely a creek but does provide sufficient water for at least a green swatch across the desert. This was totally different from anything I'd ever seen in Nevada. It wasn't especially interesting, but at least it was unique.
We passed an enormous industrial plant out in the middle of nowhere. I'm not sure if it was a power plant or a mineral smelter or what, but it looked as if they could employ half the state there. Beyond the plant we saw lots of private homes scattered on otherwise undeveloped land. The homes were probably six or seven miles apart-certainly at least five-and they all had crude "driveways" leading literally for miles from the houses to the nearest real roads.
We went to dinner at 9:30pm. Our dinner companions this evening included a boy in a Hawaiian shirt and a baseball cap with "B" on it and an elderly woman who was visiting her sick daughter in Salt Lake City. Both were pleasant and talkative, and we had a nice time at supper. I had chicken with mashed potatoes and apple pie, while Margaret had roast rack of lamb. We passed Elko while we ate.
At the table across from us was a strange woman who seemed to make her presence known repeatedly throughout this trip. Tonight she was complaining that she couldn't get a smaller portion of the items on the menu. She told the waiter that her stomach had been stapled, so she couldn't eat large amounts of food. I wondered why she had gone to the diner to begin with. They make it quite clear that the menu items in the dining car are fixed; if you want "a la carte", that's what the snack bar in the lounge car is for. Eventually the woman chose just to have dessert. I musts say that to me it seemed a bit hypocritical to have her stomach stapled and then to eat only the most empty calories available. To each her own, though.
We made it back to the coach around 10:15 and tried to settle into bed. That was not at all easy tonight. The woman across from us was reading; she had her overhead lamp on until well after midnight. I suppose she had a right to do that, but it would have been much more considerate for her to have gone to the lounge or the smoking car, both of which are lighted all night long. Two groups of people were laughing much of the night, and someone else kept pressing the "CALL" button to summon the car attendant (who never responded). It seemed as if every time I was drifting off that "CALL" button would beep again.
CONCLUDED IN PART 10
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