Travel the Second
Mar. 28th, 2026 11:01 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
tiggymalvern
The photos from the journey back, when I was able to take the intended train all the way from Los Angeles to Seattle. And then I got to see some of what I'd missed, because where the replacement bus and train services had cut straight through the middle of California (necessary to make up time, with all the switching between buses and trains), the Coast Starlight lived up to its name and stuck to the strip between the ocean and the hills for half of California. If I could have stayed on my southbound train, I would have had views over the Pacific for hours on end, instead of views of endless flat farmland and commuter towns bordering I-5 😡
A river just north of Los Angeles as we left the last of the suburban sprawl. Still semi-desert, but the ocean keeps it cooler and wetter than inland.
And shortly after that, you're into hilly farmland, with streams in the valleys between, and distinctly more rural roads.
Farmhouses or ranches dotted wherever there's water.
Then in the vicinity of Santa Barbara, the hills became smothered in yellow flowers. The delights of travelling in March!
I took utterly insane numbers of photos of those hills. Whittling them down was a lengthy process!
The land flattening out again just south of San Luis Obispo.
Crossing a river estuary or wetland.
San Luis Obispo station. Where I met a lovely couple in their 60s, him with pink streaks in his white hair, and her wearing a T-shirt saying, 'Keep the immigrants, deport the Nazis.'
North of San Luis Obispo, the train climbed up into the hills. Slowly.
Looking back over the section of track we'd just been on after a hairpin bend.
Crossing central California on a farmland plateau. There were scattered ranches with cattle, lots of Black Angus.
A river winding its way across the plateau.
Looking down on I-5 across a valley.
More trees wherever there's water.
Trackside oil wells, Dallas style!
Late afternoon sunlight on the fields, bringing out the golds.
The train then descended back towards the coast again. The wetlands south of San Jose were absolutely gorgeous, looking such a deep, rich blue at sunset, but the low light and the speed of the train made every attempt at a photo came out blurred.
I got out of bed at 7am the next day, still in California. A 35 hour train journey, and 22 hours is all California. Washington and Oregon together make up much less than half. California is HUGE. I think of San Francisco and Sacramento as northern California, and they are, but there's still a lot of California north of there, it's just that not many people live in it.
So still being in California meant that I opened my curtains at 7am to dawn light on Mount Shasta.
Now I got to see the gorgeous section of the route that I had travelled through on the southbound leg, but all in the dark.
Still views of Mount Shasta as we got close to the border into Oregon, and farmland appeared again.
Passing by flooded fields and roadside ditches as we approached the town of Klamath Falls.
The train at Klamath Falls, 9am.
Leaving Klamath Falls.
From Klamath Falls, the train climbed again, towards its highest point in the crossing of the Cascade mountains. Mostly the views in this part of the journey were a lot of trees!
A gap in the trees passing Odell Lake, near Cascade Summit. Still some patches of snow on the ground. In a case of terrible timing, one of those mile long American freight trains was going the other way as we passed the lake, so this was the only shot I got before the view was interrupted.
Descending from the Cascades, through gaps in the trees.
Before reaching Eugene, the train spends a while running alongside Lookout Point Lake, a reservoir on the Middle Fork Willamette River. The water levels were looking somewhat low, which fits with the lack of snow in the mountains this winter.
Back into farmland north and west of Eugene.
And getting inevitably cloudier.
Mount Hood wanders into view over the farms.
Sakura trees along the Willamette River in Portland - a less gloomy day than the southbound leg.
Floating houses alongside Hayden Island in the Columbia river, with Mount Adams behind. They're absolutely floating houses not houseboats, there's no way those things move.
And then we were back into Washington state, and it inevitably started raining soon after.
Still to come - photos of Tahquitz Canyon and Joshua Tree National Park. And the tennis. I have photos of that too, though they may interest some of you rather less!
A river just north of Los Angeles as we left the last of the suburban sprawl. Still semi-desert, but the ocean keeps it cooler and wetter than inland.
And shortly after that, you're into hilly farmland, with streams in the valleys between, and distinctly more rural roads.
Farmhouses or ranches dotted wherever there's water.
Then in the vicinity of Santa Barbara, the hills became smothered in yellow flowers. The delights of travelling in March!
I took utterly insane numbers of photos of those hills. Whittling them down was a lengthy process!
The land flattening out again just south of San Luis Obispo.
Crossing a river estuary or wetland.
San Luis Obispo station. Where I met a lovely couple in their 60s, him with pink streaks in his white hair, and her wearing a T-shirt saying, 'Keep the immigrants, deport the Nazis.'
North of San Luis Obispo, the train climbed up into the hills. Slowly.
Looking back over the section of track we'd just been on after a hairpin bend.
Crossing central California on a farmland plateau. There were scattered ranches with cattle, lots of Black Angus.
A river winding its way across the plateau.
Looking down on I-5 across a valley.
More trees wherever there's water.
Trackside oil wells, Dallas style!
Late afternoon sunlight on the fields, bringing out the golds.
The train then descended back towards the coast again. The wetlands south of San Jose were absolutely gorgeous, looking such a deep, rich blue at sunset, but the low light and the speed of the train made every attempt at a photo came out blurred.
I got out of bed at 7am the next day, still in California. A 35 hour train journey, and 22 hours is all California. Washington and Oregon together make up much less than half. California is HUGE. I think of San Francisco and Sacramento as northern California, and they are, but there's still a lot of California north of there, it's just that not many people live in it.
So still being in California meant that I opened my curtains at 7am to dawn light on Mount Shasta.
Now I got to see the gorgeous section of the route that I had travelled through on the southbound leg, but all in the dark.
Still views of Mount Shasta as we got close to the border into Oregon, and farmland appeared again.
Passing by flooded fields and roadside ditches as we approached the town of Klamath Falls.
The train at Klamath Falls, 9am.
Leaving Klamath Falls.
From Klamath Falls, the train climbed again, towards its highest point in the crossing of the Cascade mountains. Mostly the views in this part of the journey were a lot of trees!
A gap in the trees passing Odell Lake, near Cascade Summit. Still some patches of snow on the ground. In a case of terrible timing, one of those mile long American freight trains was going the other way as we passed the lake, so this was the only shot I got before the view was interrupted.
Descending from the Cascades, through gaps in the trees.
Before reaching Eugene, the train spends a while running alongside Lookout Point Lake, a reservoir on the Middle Fork Willamette River. The water levels were looking somewhat low, which fits with the lack of snow in the mountains this winter.
Back into farmland north and west of Eugene.
And getting inevitably cloudier.
Mount Hood wanders into view over the farms.
Sakura trees along the Willamette River in Portland - a less gloomy day than the southbound leg.
Floating houses alongside Hayden Island in the Columbia river, with Mount Adams behind. They're absolutely floating houses not houseboats, there's no way those things move.
And then we were back into Washington state, and it inevitably started raining soon after.
Still to come - photos of Tahquitz Canyon and Joshua Tree National Park. And the tennis. I have photos of that too, though they may interest some of you rather less!
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Date: 2026-03-31 09:48 am (UTC)I never knew there were sakura trees outside of D.C. You're lucky to have seen them in bloom. :)