Hitting the tracks.

 My love of trains comes from the days when I used to have to frequent that form of transportation to go home on weekends, after moving from Malvern, St. Elizabeth to Kingston.

 I took the train every Saturday from Kingston to Balaclava in Northern St. Elizabeth, where my father would pick me up and drive me home. 

I am still nostalgic about those days but alas, Jamaica does not have a good all Island rail service anymore😡.

So, wherever I go,  I still grab every opportunity to ride the rails when I have the time.

(Joan, my views: LYMING IN UTAH (joan-myviews.blogspot.com)

Joan, my views: Riding the rails (joan-myviews.blogspot.com)

Even the little street cars in San Francisco 😁.

These little cable cars have been chugging up the hills of San Francisco for 150 years and they are still working.

The longest trip I have ever taken though, is recently on the Amtrak Zephyr from San Francisco to Chicago, over a two-day period. 

The distance is almost 2000 miles and the scenery is simply stunning.

The Colorado River accompanied us for 238 miles.

We were joined by a large party of Mennonites in Grand Junction, Colorado.  Their dress is distinctive.The women all wear similar hair ties. The men wear suspenders and most have long beards.

They hail from Pennsylvania and speak their own language, a dialect practiced over the years, made up of words and phrases from Dutch, German, and English.

 It is only an oral language, I was told. 

One member of the group told me they were vacationing and had visited towns in Indiana and Colorado and were heading to Naperville in Illinois, one stop before ours in Chicago. 

The journey was so memorable and the scenery so unforgettable, that I found myself feeling sad when we drew into the Chicago terminal, though over two hours late. 

Our quiet, comfortable Zenith.

Inside the viewing car.

That delay was caused by a problem with cargo trains in Nevada, for apparently, they have priority on the tracks.

                                        

During the entire journey, I found myself longing for the day when technology can take us to the point where one can simply look at something and our eyes take photos! For the beauty of this world is beyond verbal description and even the scenes we managed to capture as we went along, cannot do them justice.

California and Colorado are super beautiful. Nevada being mainly desert, is not so great but it has attracted a lot of movies over the years. Maybe it's because it has so many wild horses. 

However, I only saw 4 or 5 as we crossed that state. They were quenching their thirst by a small creek.

Utah is quite attractive too but not to the same extent as Colorado.

We descended from the mountains with their magnificent trees, beautiful deep valleys and gorges and rivers wending beside us  into the plains of Nebraska, Iowa, Illinois, and Omaha,  where the scenery changed totally from mountains and valleys to neatly laid out irrigated farms. 

For many hundreds of miles too, we could see windmills behind these farms as wind power seems to be a big thing out there.

 And of course, there were lots of churches!

Important info.

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MORE MEMORIES IN PICTURES

Denver, Colorado as seen from the Rockies at night.

Our Zephyr.

Arid Nevada

Red rocks cover much of Colorado.

My schoolmate and fellow traveler Sonja

Links: 

https://joan-myviews.blogspot.com/2023/08/its-desantis-fault.html?m=1

https://joan-myviews.blogspot.com/2023/08/chicago-born.html

https://joan-myviews.blogspot.com/2023/08/i-love-san-francisco.html

Colorado Plateau, Mesa

Some of the most spectacular canyons carved out over centuries by nature, are to be found where Colorado, New Mexico, Utah, Arizona, (called four corners which is marked by a monument) and sections of Nevada.

 

Recently, we were able to visit the Colorado National Monument in Mesa, which is a section of the Colorado Plateau and even drove around Rim Road. This route (around 25 miles long) takes you from Fruita and ends up in Grand Junction and provides you with the most panoramic, unforgettable but sometimes dizzying view of the rock formations, tunnels and city below.

This area had been populated by the Ute people, (or as they call themselves, Nuche). They are Colorado’s longest continuous residents.

Castle Gate rock formation

Can you believe climbers ascend that!

However, as part of America’s brutal and oppressive history, they were forcibly moved and confined to reservations elsewhere.

Other spectacular rock formations

 

Wining down (or up)

In my book, Colorado is one of the most beautiful states in the USA and hence one of my favorites. It is a large state and since I know I have only seen a tiny section, never pass up an opportunity to see more.

The Book  Cliffs mountain range 

 This fall we went 'wining ' in Palisades, a town so small that it doesn’t even have a proper supermarket to serve its 3000 or so residents and only a few places open before 10 am. 

The drive to get there is really spectacular though.

Palisades is close to Grand Junction , the last city in Colorado before you cross over into Utah. So close seems to be the relationship between its residents and the state of Utah, that the street signs tell you the distance between each section of Palisades and the Utah border. 

Strange since that town is in Colorado!

We went over to Grand Junction and while it seems pleasant to the eyes, us three black girls did not appear to be welcome in some places and some signs on vehicles were downright dangerous looking. 

Like the sign on a large truck declaring "I lubricate my AR 15 with the tears of liberals". 

So we never tarried long there! 

But I stray.

The little town of Palisades lies in the valley beneath the huge attractive Book Cliffs Mountain range, so named, as someone decided that it looks like a series of books on a shelf.

Here its 35 and 8/10 miles from the Utah border!

It does in parts and the general area is so attractive.

 Ironically, though close to alcohol-shy Utah, Palisades has over 40 wineries and that is why we were there. 

Many farms have grape arbors in the back and wineries in front, so wine tasting is the name of the game there.

 On this trip we booked a horse -drawn carriage to take us from winery to winery so we could enjoy the various varieties without falling into the trap of drinking and driving.

 We were so lucky that our first stop, was at Varaison Vineyards for it was the owner who greeted us and he had a wealth of knowledge.

 Better yet, he introduced us to some of his best wines.

After that, our fantastic luck ran out though, as at the other wineries at which we stopped, they told us we had to pay for the tastings.

Varaisin Vineyards

 This could be because they suffered a terrible loss in 2020, when temperatures dropped from 54 degrees to 17 degrees overnight, wiping out most of the grape crop. But if people do not get to taste the products,  don’t they tend not to buy?

Anyway, thanks to Varaison we were so well souped up, that the little tots we got elsewhere just kept up happy. Then when we returned to our hotel, it was Happy Hour.

So, our day of wine tasting was, filled with happiness, very well spent and we even made some new friends to boot.

 Beautiful Colorado I just love you, (when it’s not cold!)-

Memories

Some of the sculptures downtown Grand Junction