Coastal Starlight
This train was expected to leave Emeryville at around 9pm that night but it was late and also very full. The Coastal Starlight travels from Los Angeles to Seattle and it is one of the most popular and scenic AMTRAK routes. It was my 9th train trip.
I was headed for Portland, Oregon. It was a very pretty trip up through conifer clad mountains with deep gorges and Klamath Lake, a large body of freshwater with wetlands full of birds. In Oregon we saw fertile farmland and the pretty Willamette river. We passed snowy peaks on the way. They looked volcanic and I took pics of Mt Shasta and Mt McLaughlin
Portland
The train reached Portland at about 4:30pm and I made my way to my airbnb which was quite a way out of central Portland, but near a bus stop. The suburbs I travelled through had lovely gardens with giant rhododendrons in full flower. The houses were all timber frame and fairly modest standing on quarter acre plots or thereabouts. I expected Portland to be beautiful and this was so. Private gardens were lovely and there is a series of parks in the city and along the river, but I also found it had many homeless people, some quite aggressive and some of the streets about the station were very smelly
As I love bearded irises, I took the train back to Salem on my first day and ubered to Schreiner’s Iris farm. This is the premier iris nursery in the USA and is open in May for visitors to enjoy the flowering spectacle. What a blissful few hours I spent wandering around . It was worth the long trip. Sadly it was not the time to buy corms.
Back in Portland I walked along the river park and then visited Powell’s bookshop, one of the biggest bookshops in the US and known to me as a source of secondhand books bought on Amazon. I was amazed to find a recipe book called Nopalito by the founder of the restaurant we had eaten at in San Francisco, and foolishly bought it to add to my pack, with some novels for the trip ahead.
On my second and last day in Portland I headed up to the Arboretum, Rose garden and Japanese garden on the hill above town. The roses weren’t in bloom yet, but the Japanese garden was lovely.
I made my way back to the station to catch the Empire builder which was my 10th and longest trip and was to take me across the top of the US back to Chicago.
The Empire builder
The train left Portland at about 4:30pm and for the entire afternoon it followed the course of the mighty Columbia river upstream. This is an extremely beautiful ride and if you do the trip try to get a seat on the right side for best views. At one stage magical Mount Hood, the snow capped volcano appeared in the distance. I spent a lot of time in the observation car that afternoon. This is a lovely place to be, but not good for photographing as the roof windows caste reflections on your images.
In the middle of the night, at Spokane you join up with the portion of the train which set out from Seattle. If you like trains it is fun to watch them make the connection.
The next morning one is once again up in snowy mountains with rushing rivers at the Glacier National Park. Unfortunately it was rainy and visibility not great. Once again I crossed the continental divide (4th time) and it was fun to see the rivers did run from west to east after that. It was also amazing how soon after the continental divide the mountains and conifers stopped and we were in the flat plains of Montana. And flat plains we had for mile upon mile. It was good to have a book to read! In the afternoon we passed an area with shale gas mining and several farms seemed to have small nodding donkey oil pumps.
One of things I remember about this trip across the top of the country is the dark red barns and grain/corn/wheat storage silos that each farm has. This is all seems to be rich arable land. Across the US towns have tall water towers, often emblazoned with the name of the town – good to know where you are as you pass through many little town and station names are often not visible.
One cannot help wondering how the colonists who came here from Europe must have felt, the scale of the landscape is so different to what they must have been used to. I would also like to read more about Lewis and Clark who were to first to chart a way through the mountains to the Pacific and who came into contact with the original inhabitants who loved this land and are not apparent here today.
Soon we met the headwaters of the Mississippi. What an enormous river it is, starting up north and flowing right down the country to drain into the sea near New Orleans. We reached Chicago at about 4:30pm on the 2nd day (48hrs after leaving Portland).
I was out of reading material and although it was a bit rainy I rushed to a 2nd handbook shop several streets away to stock up on books for the rest of the trip and got back to station in time to have some supper and hop on my overnight train to Boston.
Lake Shore Limited
This was the first time I had spent 3 nights in a row on board trains and this was to be my final night of sleeping in a train seat. Sadly I found the Lake Shore limited was not a superliner and the seats were not quite as roomy.
It was still rainy the next morning and the whole day we seemed to travel beside pretty rivers or the Erie canal and alternated between small farms and natural woodland. I did not get see any of the big lakes, although we must have been close to them.
We got to Boston at about 8pm and I set off via the subway to find my bed for the night.
Read about Boston & back to New York.
Coast to Coast Gallery
