A Visit To the Great American Southwest
My wife and I will be off on a 12-day trip next week … with some train travel in the mix, of course.
After flying to Los Angeles, we’ll take Amtrak’s Southwest Chief to Flagstaff, AZ, and drive from there for a visit to the Grand Canyon. For years I have been hearing stories about how crowded the place is, which is one of the reasons we chose a date after the opening of schools around the country. We shall see!
After the Grand Canyon, we have set aside several days with no specific destinations, but plan on driving to a number of the National Parks in Arizona and New Mexico, ending that part of the trip in Grand Junction, Colorado.
That’s where we will turn back westward again aboard the California Zephyr, getting off near Sacramento, spending a night, and concluding our train travels on the Coast Starlight for it’s run down the California coast back to Los Angeles.Should be fun and interesting. I’ll keep do some posting along the way and let you know how things go.
Jim, sounds like a dream trip and I hope you will find time to post a few notes and photos.
My wife and I started our great affair w/Amtrak in Flagstaff when we wandered into the train station/visitors center there. We’d always talked about driving the length of old US Route 66, but picked up a timetable for the Southwest Chief and thought that sounded like a better way to see the same country.
BTW, starting Sept 27th, PBS is broadcasting a Ken Burns series on our National Parks. Here’s the URL:
http://video.pbs.org/program/1072181584/