The Polar Express Christmas 2009

CALIFORNIA to UTAH for Christmas:
Too expensive to fly + too clunky of a van to drive =
THE TRAIN (aka Amatrak aka California Zephyr)

(We almost missed our train. It arrived within minutes of us pulling up in our van. We barely had time to park the car and haul all of our luggage to the curb. I'm glad it was running a little late).

I have to say that I was pleasantly surprised with our big adventure. (I was pretty nervous before we left, especially after hearing stories of the train being 14 hours late!) It was better than I expected. We almost missed our train because we couldn't find the depot, so it was a little stressful getting there. The train pulled up about 5 minutes after we arrived and left within 5 minutes. We barely had time to get to our seats before the train started moving again.(One of the few "smoke" stops...believe it or not, they had to kick someone off the train for smoking on board...on the way there and on the way back too...they had NO mercy, lol)

One of the little towns (Truckee) just coming out of the Sierra Nevada's.
Beautiful...
We watched a few movies on the laptop...including a 3-D "Polar Express" that night. The scenery was SO beautiful. We went through several tunnels. Addyson had to blow the wooden train whistle on every tunnel. They have a dining car, snack bar and viewing car with big windows and tables to play cards, color or eat. We brought most of our own food, but got mini pizzas and yogurt from the snack bar for dinner. We could walk around as much as we wanted, but most of the time we resembled drunks...Pretty sure I almost fell on someone's lap more than once, lol.
View from our seats. On the left is a little water dispenser with little cups. The girls "needed" lots of drinks.
The stairs...which we went up and down SEVERAL times. We were upstairs and the bathrooms and snack bar were downstairs.
Lots of drinks meant lots of trips to the bathroom...which wasn't the cleanest bathroom I've ever seen...pretty gross actually. But there was soap at least, right? I had to keep the door open so I could help Addyson get on the potty...Hardly room for even just ONE person in there.

This is the VIEWING car. We didn't spend much time in here because it was always full, but it was nice to come in and look out the big windows every once in a while.

The only thing Ric and I missed out on was sleep. It was pretty hard to sleep on the train. The seats look really comfortable, but we found out they were pretty decieving. Brooklyn and Addyson were able to sprawl out across the seats and slept a good amount of time, but I think I got about an hour sleep. The train makes several stops along the way with passengers getting on and off, and the door between cars is constantly opening and closing...making it hard to shut out the noise and get any sleep. Maybe next time we can afford a sleeping car...

Got a little reading time in...notice the little foot rest. Looks comfortable...not really.

Addyson...sleep drunk. I had to wrestle her into taking a nap. She slept with her legs over my lap
the whole night.
We arrived in Provo at about 5:30 in the morning. My parents met us there, and Grandpa Pudge (my mom's dad) surprised us by being there as well. It was SO exciting to see everyone as we got off the train. Brooklyn told the family sitting behind us that she hadn't ever been to the North Pole before...after we stepped off the train into the freezing cold temperature with snow crunching and sparkling beneath our feet, it really felt like the North Pole!
What a great adventure!