Ridin' The Rails

Mike and I took a long weekend and rode the train to Denver. We had to get up at "0 dark 30" as Mike calls it. The train was scheduled to leave the station in Salt Lake at 4:45 am. Waaaaaay too early for me. I thought I would make it up by sleeping some of the time. But it was so beautiful I spent my time looking out the window in awe of the landscape. It helped that I had my camera along. I am my brother's sister in that respect. I love to take landscape photos. I'm not nearly as talented as Denny was, but I understand the draw. Some of them even came out pretty good.

The trip was glorious. Even with the dry summer the leaves were beautiful, the Colorado River was sufficiently wild, and our fellow passengers were interesting. We've been meaning to take this trip for several years now and the time never seemed right. Finally I decided I wasn't getting any younger and we'd better do it while we still could. We spent Saturday and most of Sunday in Denver. I hadn't really visited there before. We took the kids to the mint several years back, but didn't see any more of the city. And aunt Mary drove the family to Denver the year Denny was born. I was barely three. I do remember some of that trip. We went to a public garden (now an amusement park) where everyone else in our group commented on how lovely the flowers were. I couldn't see them because there were hedges around the beds about 2 feet high. Well, being three, I was about 2 feet high myself. We went to Santa Claus land and I watched my sister chase after the reindeer. We stayed in a little roadside motel where my sis and I walked into the wrong room. (Even then she wouldn't listen to me!) My favorite memory is of the little plastic chicken toy my aunt gave us. You pressed it down and it layed an egg! Cool.

I recommend train travel, even if you have to get up too gosh darned early. The pace is more relaxed, and you sure get better photos from the train windows than I ever got from a plane!