Amtrak for the Holidays, Part 2

Aftre doing the whole Home For The Holidays thing for a few days, it was time to start heading back West.  If I was being totally practical, I would have gone back the way I came, taking the Southwest Chief directly back to LA.  Always leery of excessive practicality, I decided to instead go back to LA via San Francisco.  This was partly just to avoid taking the same route twice, but was mostly due to the fact that Amtrak’s Chicago – San Francisco train is called The California Zephyr.  I’ll be honest, the phrase “California Zephyr” is probably what sold me on going Amtrak to begin with.  I’m a sucker for cool place names, and apparently, cool train names as well.

It's kind of like Smucker's. With a name like California Zephyr, it has to be good.

Day 43: From Denver to Dalhart, Texas

I wandered a bit in Denver today. I woke up rather late and spent an inordinate amount of time updating the blog, so I found myself with not much time to do much else. From what little I did see, the city seems to be a pretty nice place. There’s a lot of eccentric architecture, a very swanky convention center, and other signs that there’s a lot of money floating around, which would bode well for job markets and the like.

The first and only view of the Denver skyline I found

Day 42: From Heber, UT to Denver, CO

Today was a long drive along Route 40, a quick side trip to Rocky Mountain National Park, and the arrival into the outskirts of Denver.

Some photos from the road:

Wow. And I thought "Bong State Recreation Area" was akwardly named.