Our first day on the train

After spending our first night-time hours on the train not sleeping (except for brief minutes of dozing), I finally saw the dawn shedding some light on the world moving past our windows.  Now I could see signs telling me what towns we were passing through, and at 6:30, when they announced that breakfast was ready, loudspeakers that had been silent all night came to life.  From this point on, announcements were made telling us what stop was next, whether it would be a long enough stop for smokers to de-train and have a few puffs, and so forth.

Imagine my delight when I discovered a fresh pot of coffee in our sleeper car!  It was surprisingly good coffee, too.  In fact, this trip was a treasure as far as coffee goes, because the two hotels in which we stayed were equipped with Keurig coffee makers in every room.  For an addict like me, that made up for other inconveniences such as lost luggage and a sleepless night on the train.

Breakfast wasn't a gourmet delight, but there were many choices offered, and considering the conditions under which the cooks and waiters work, it was wonderful, much better than what you find in motels that offer breakfast.  The other meals were great, and since our meals were paid for, we could choose anything on the menu.  The steak was very good.  Twice I opted for a nice big salad with chicken strips for lunch.

After finding the coffee that first morning, I returned to our roomette and told Cliff he might as well climb down and play footsie with me on the lower bunk.

  No, he didn't go to sleep.  He was only trying to get comfortable.  

He looks sleepy, doesn't he?  After breakfast we tried reading on our Kindles, but neither of us could concentrate very well.  As you can see, I was taking notes to help me with blog entries when I got back home.  Unfortunately, the notes ended up in the lost luggage, so I'm having to rely on memory.  There was a friendly man we saw often in our car who must have been a train attendant.  He never really told us what his duties were, but he said he was training the lady on our sleeper car who was an attendant.  He seemed to enjoy his job immensely.  At one point, he was paged on the P.A. system:  "Crazy Tom, please report to the dining car."  It was he who came around to see what times we wanted to eat our next meals as we headed west.  We would choose a time, he'd hand us a piece of paper with the time written on it so we wouldn't forget. 

Time sort of drags when you're riding a train for twenty-four hours one way, so we really looked forward to meals to break the monotony.  There is an observation car where anyone can sit, so we went up there a few times; but it was often filled to capacity.

That's Crazy Tom, explaining to Cliff how something works (because my husband ALWAYS wants to know how stuff works).  We learned to get off the train every chance we got... another way to break up the day and stretch our legs.  

We saw the verdant plains change to dessert-like conditions with snowcapped peaks in the distance.

We saw hills rising out of flatlands.  Crazy Tom told stories about civil war battles and Indians, over the P.A. system.

We saw towns we didn't know existed.  Who knew there was another Las Vegas?  

Sometimes depots are in tiny towns that are hardly towns at all.

Now there's a town we've heard of!  I think Bugs Bunny used to say something about taking a left turn in Albuquerque.

When we went through Garden City, Kansas, I thought about two Facebook friends I've never met face-to-face who live there, and left a Facebook "hello" to one of them, Char.

This shows all the stops made by the Southwest Chief.  We boarded in Kansas City and got off at Williams Junction.  We met a lot of people who were headed from one coast to the other, which would probably take the better part of three days... maybe longer.  Click HERE for all the details on the Southwest Route.  

To be continued...