Circum-training the American West: part 3, guest blog by abigailmm

I made my way to the dining car for breakfast Saturday as it opened at 6 am. There was just a glimpse of beautiful Mt. Shasta as it disappeared behind us. A couple of hours later, at Klamath Falls, Oregon, we picked up two volunteers from the Klamath Falls Museum who provided a running commentary to those in the lounge car of what we were seeing. This is a very nice collaboration between Amtrak and, usually but not in this case, the National Parks Service.

We headed up the Klamath Valley, across miles of the wetlands of the Upper Klamath Wildlife Refuge, with views off to the west of Mount Scott* and Mount Thielsen (not sure which this is). Then up into the Cascades, past some beautiful high lakes, and down through 26 tunnels and assorted roofed snow shelters.

approaching the east side of the Cascades

Snow was still on the ground, a wonder to a Texan in mid-May.

From Eugene we traversed the broad Willamette** Valley, the ‘Promised Land’ of the Oregon Trail settlers, till we arrived in Portland.

I had been worried about my connection to the east/west Empire Builder at Portland. Since Amtrak doesn’t own its own tracks, their passenger trains take a back seat to freights if there are any glitches in the schedule, and the connection was just an hour. However all was well. I sat among the merrymakers in Portland’s Union Station*** who were celebrating National Train Day with a band, a raffle, and various other goings-on. After a while, a red-cap ferried me out to my train, and we were off across the Columbia and up its Gorge. By sunset, we were up at the relatively flat land in eastern Washington, having traversed in half an afternoon what took the pioneers with their wagons arduous weeks.#

crossing the Columbia into Washington state

Heading up the Gorge. Until we picked up the Seattle half of the Empire Builder train, the lounge car was the front car; evidently we were pushed, not pulled. You can see the near shore out the front window.

I wonder if the island is Oregon or Washington?

basalt cliffs fall sheer to the water

Wind energy is harvested to add to the hydroelectricity from the dams.

We left the Columbia about dark and headed northeast across eastern Washington toward Spokane. Pulling in around midnight, we waited a couple hours to get hooked up with the Seattle half of our train. Then we went east across northern Idaho, which we crossed entirely in the wee hours. So I can’t count it among the 13 states I saw on the trip. By breakfast time we were in Montana; just after breakfast, as I was heading back to my coach seat to get my stuff, since I had decided to spend the morning in the lounge car, it got very dark. We had entered the 7 miles of the Flathead Tunnel, the second longest in the US. We seemed to be in the dark forever; I guess it was actually around eight minutes. Shortly after, we were in Whitefish, Montana, and then we headed up over the Rockies.

The satellite view of the East Portal of the tunnel (actually the north end, as that section of the route is n/s) caught a freight in the act of going in.