 
Saturday, September 29, 2001 - Train, Train, Sixteen Coaches Long
We woke up at dawn today in Dodge City, and got of
town immediately. This is an area that was part of the dust bowl back in
the 1930's. As we move on into Colorado corn phases out into milo, which
takes less water and now into dry shortgrass prairie-pasture land. To grow
anything here requires irrigation and we have just passed into an area where
this is dispensed with. This was of course prime buffalo country in
pre-settlement days. Here we have one of the great advantages of traveling by
train. You actually get to see the land as you pass through it. At
40,000 feet you don't see anything.
These two days on the train are good for us because of
the forced inactivity. With our tapering down in mileage since last
Saturday and the train ride we will have ridden less than twenty miles in the
week before leaving our starting point, Union Station in L.A. That ensures
we will have fresh legs when we start out.
We have now entered New Mexico. The railroad climbs
thru a low, gradual pass and debouches onto a high plateau in northern N.M.,
soon to descend into the Rio Grande valley in Albuquerque. It is a
respectable train now, having picked up additional cars and freight in Kansas
City. I count about fifty cars in the train and there is one
"u"-turn where we could see the entire train at once. It seems
that the mountains in northern N.M. help keep cool northern winds out of central
N.M. We have just pulled into Albuquerque and it is sunny and 83*
This is the weather we can expect for the first few weeks of the trip and it
makes you wonder why we have rain gear, tights, long sleeve shirts, etc. that we
will have to haul around.
We woke up at dawn in SoCal (not to be confused with
NoCal) with the sun coming up over the mountains and, needless to say, a
perfectly clear sky. This kind of weather must get boring!
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