I spent the first week of March traveling from Omaha, Nebraska to my second home in Grand Junction, Colorado via Amtrak train–The California Zephyr on a vacation from work. I love taking the train because it gives me a whole day to tat both ways (there and back). The train leaves Omaha, NE at 11 pm thus I can work a full day and not have to sacrifice a precious day of vacation time. The train travels from Omaha through all of Nebraska (along the flat, boring Platte River Valley that interstate 80 follows) during the night to get to Denver early morning. In Denver I get a great coffee at Union Station (recently renovated and cool)–Pigtrain Coffee Co. From Denver the train is timed to go through the incredible Rocky Mountains in the daylight. Jerry likes to sit in our assigned seats/room and I like to go to the Vista Car where I sit and tat and talk to people around the world. There’s almost always Amish people on board. The tatting sometimes gives people around me a ‘conversation starter question or comment’ that then gets us talking about where we’re going, where we’ve been, and life in general. We usually get to Grand Junction, CO around 3 pm–our destination. I say ‘usually’ because when you are talking train travel, especially during the winter and going through the Rocky Mountains, the one thing that you can NOT count on is the train being on time. My husband and I are used to this and just sit back and say “we’re on vacation”, bonus time to stay on the train (AND TAT!). I would NOT recommend Amtrak Train travel if you are on a time schedule! I once took the train from Omaha to Denver to ski with my kids (who both live in CO) and the train was late. I was sooo unhappy because I had already bought 3 ski lift tickets (not cheap!) and was calculating how much money each minute of lateness I was missing from skiing.

If anyone wants recommendations about train travel on The California Zephyr, let me know. I have met people on this train that traveled from around the world to ride this train (however, that was pre-Covid).