Planes, trains...............

Get your kleenex out because you may be really sad as you read this and experience this LOOOOOONG day with us. It started out innocently enough and we didn't have a clue what was ahead......we should have when our train was originally delayed. But we were positive! We were on a journey! And nothing could daunt our enthusiasm. See, here we are all happy and excited to "all aboard". We were scheduled to depart at 8 a.m. but because of flooding in Iowa, the time had been delayed to 1 p.m. So we made the best of it and had a fun lunch at a restaurant around the corner from the station and ate outside in the beautiful and sunny but cool Denver weather. We even had time to stop off at the trendy used bookstore called "Tattered Cover".

Union Station! What a beautiful building and such a great addition to our railroad experience.

We finally get to board and here is Dad getting his boarding pass checked and our seating assignments.

If you ever plan to ride the rails, be prepared to settle back and enjoy the scenery at a very leisurely pace. Inside the train was quiet and at times it felt like we were just gliding across the ground. The mountains of Colorado were beautiful and constantly changing. Here's Suzi doing what we mostly did!

This part was definitely a highlight of our travel across Colorado--eating in the diner car. It was just like I thought it would be, just like it is on the movies. In fact, Suzi and I almost broke out in the song "Snow" from the movie, White Christmas, except there was no snow! We were joined at our table by a man about my age who didn't fit at the table across the aisle where his family was. They were from Minneapolis and were taking the train on to San Francisco. He entertained us and was quite the dinner companion. In fact, we met so many friendly people. That part was so pleasantly surprising and different from travel in airplanes. We met a young couple from New Zealand taking a month to travel from NY to CA. And we met a fishing tour guide from Wisconsin headed to Grand Junction to fish with some buddies. There was also the elderly lady in yellow whose two husbands had died as well as a boyfriend. Suzi and I told Dad to steer clear from her!

I guess I was pretty dramatic at the beginning of this blog when I told you you'd need your kleenex. Overall, the trip was a success and so much fun but because of the delay, we were destined to spend the night on the train and that wasn't fun for three old people. Being unprepared didn't help either. We didn't take anything to cover up with so we froze and then just couldn't get comfortable. The train finally arrived in Salt Lake City at 5 a.m. and I thought Suzi would jump out before the train even came to a stop. She was pretty done by that point. We all were. We took a taxi to the Marriot Hotel downtown where we were to pick up our rental car and had a delicious and much deserved breakfast at the restaurant there. I'm sure we were a sight after traveling all day and night but we were too tired and hungry to care. And we had one goal in mind: get to Linda's ASAP so we could finally rest!