* It is love at first sight with Kentucky!
* White clapboard houses needing paint
* Giant smokestacks
* The perfect pastoral scenes
* Mist over the grass
* The hills rising up out of Shawnee state forest covered in mist
* Tree lined rollicking slopes
* a deer standing in a river
* red barn, wooden barns sitting in green pastures
* white steeples of little white churches
* cylindrical hay bales dotting the fields
* West Virginia has been filled with trees, trees, and more trees.
* the White Sulphur Springs Amtrak stop looks like you stopped at the north pole between their red & green building and white columns with red ribbon wrapped around them, Christmas lights in the windows too!
* beautiful churches spread throughout the towns
* the Allegheny mountains in the Appalachian Chain
* horse pastures
* fields of yellow, white, and pink wildflowers
* lots and lots and lots of trees - mountain ash - I had to look this up to identify it since the tree didn't look like anything I knew but very distinctive
* parts of the University of Virginia
* Washington Monument and what I think was the top of the Jefferson Monument
We finally got started on the Cardinal route (I had previously been on the California Zephyr) around one in the morning. I slept through the rest of Indiana and Ohio to wake up and find we had crossed into Kentucky and were skirting along the Ohio River. I had wanted to wake up at sunrise, and for the second morning in a row, I did. I instantly fell in love with Kentucky. The green fields with the tree studded hills and the streets lined with white clapboard homes, were just all picture perfect.
Unfortunately from this train, there is no lounge car with big windows, and the windows I'm looking out are water drop stained. This does not bode well for taking pictures. It does seem that just about every building that is not brick needs to be painted.
I know this is gross, but I'm definitely needing a shower by this point. I don't think I smell too much (luckily there really is no chance of sweating sitting on a train for hours at a time), but still, I am feeling itchy. I had been hoping that during my layover in Chicago, I would be able to find some kind of shower area at the station. Well, I didn't even get a chance to. I've done my best at a sponge bath, and have managed to brush my teeth and wash my face every morning and night and change my clothes each day. Still...it's not enough. I feel bad that I am sitting in the middle of a family of five traveling back to Pennsylvania for a family reunion. They are incredibly friendly and fun, but I'm just hoping I don't smell that much! I am going to warn Meredith before she sees me tonight to not get too close! At least it repels any would-be flirtatious men!
One thing can be said for sure about the trains - they are not timely. Here we are about three hours behind....AGAIN. I heard it best put by an elderly train member - you can't be in a hurry or on a schedule. It becomes about the journey...
Today has been a little harder in that I have felt a lot more motion sickness. I'm not sure if it is the terrain, the train not having the bigger windows to sit at, the day, or just what. I've been sleeping a little more because of that.
By now we are four hours behind. I will arrive in New York about 2 am. Luckily for me, I am going to the town that never sleeps. I should be able to easily get a taxi to take me where I need to go. Thank God for that. It's been dark out since we finished Virginia, so I haven't really seen much. As beautiful as the surroundings were, the tough part was that the trees often lined the tracks and made it hard to see very far, besides not having a window seat. I think that made me feel a little more motion sickness.
Today would have been much more painful except that I had long conversations with the daughter and the mother of the family I ended up sitting with. The daughter had been a math teacher at a Christian school and the mother was a counselor in a non-profit organization she started. They were both great to speak with, God knows when to send people my way :)
Well, tonight I am watching Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix which also helps to pass time quickly. I did start reading Les Miserables the other day and am now several pages in. I am fascinated by the character of the bishop. My favorite part of the play is right at the beginning where the priest shows grace to Jean Val Jean. The words in the musical are absolutely beautiful. I am finding that I love his character in the book as well. Victor Hugo goes into GREAT detail on him, but I am glad.
Well, I started in Emeryville, CA Sunday morning and in the last 87 hours I have traveled through California, Nevada, Utah, Colorado, Iowa, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio (asleep), Kentucky, West Virginia, Virginia, Washington DC, Delaware, and now Pennsylvania. I will soon be passing into New Jersey and then finally New York, my destination. I'm grateful that this was the longest train part first. It has been good overall, but I'm ready to be off and there and glad I don't have any long train trips scheduled for several days.
I'm signing off for the night...so long and I'll see you in New York.
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad
No comments:
Post a Comment