25-26 June
Sunday morning saw us stop off, en route to Seattle King Street Station, at the same coffee shop we had visited on the way to the hotel, where we grabbed a coffee and large croissant for breakfast. We checked in our rucksacks and waited in the lovely old station building. Our train was due to depart at 9.50am and arrive in Emeryville for a connecting bus to San Francisco early the following morning.
It was 9am in Seattle, but 6pm in France, and Chris and Becca (plus Disco the dog) were just one and a half hours drive away from arriving at La Coste, which had been left to its fate since the beginning of March. No doubt there would be many questions to answer when they arrived, although they would have endured a full day‘s driving in the heat and be pretty shattered. Much to-ing and fro-ing ensued at different hours of different nights as they were nine hours ahead of us!
We had booked a roomette on this, our first Amtrak train. It was in the sleeper car on the upper deck, with two seats, which slid together to form the bottom bunk, with a small cloak’s cupboard and a sliding door. Cosy, but quiet.
All aboard! Where is our roomette? Roomette for a snoozette
We parked ourselves in the observation car to hear one of the volunteer commentators on the train to Portland, pointing out highlights, with a bit of history. However, there was too much information, and we returned to the peace of our little room.
Lunch, dinner and breakfast in the dining car was included. We chose our eating sitting time, but not our dining companions. Over lunch and dinner, and a cuppa in the café, fellow travellers gave us ideas of places to visit, which we have followed up. Our friends in San Francisco were most impressed that we had chosen Oxbow market as somewhere we wanted to visit in downtown Napa!
The speed of the train varied greatly and there were occasions when it was single track and we had to wait for an on-coming train to pass us. We had some splendid views of snow-capped mountains as well as a huge scenic lake. We were surprised by how much forest we went through and how sparsely populated the landscape was.
Morning has broken…
We were pleased with the sleeping arrangements, despite Lynne bumping her head on the upper bunk, before it was lowered. This was good news as we have another few sleeper journeys to take on our trip. The toilets could have been cleaner, but the food was better than expected – the evening meal even included a glass of wine!
Although the train seemed to be running late before we retired for the night, the train caught up and arrived at Emeryville exactly on time. Sleep was disturbed, but that was self-inflicted as Lynne woke up with a start, realising that we had left mouse poison out at La Coste and we didn’t want Disco to be the first to find it. So she was sending Chris messages as to where the poison might be hidden in the middle of our night, waking up Peter in the process.
We collected our rucksacks on the platform, just as Gerry arrived to pick us up.
