[title type="h5"]
Saturday, August 22, 2015.
Another Market Breakfast. Almost The Entire West Coast.[/title]
This is the fourth part of my diary from my recent boxing up of the western two-thirds of America by railroad.
Everyone in residence is up early at the home of Jude and Suzanne, so we can go to the Grand Central Market before the line gets long at Eggslut. That we go to the same place twice in four days tells how good it is. But our luck of Wednesday, when we were second in line, would not repeat today. At least forty people form a queue that twists through the well-battered market. We don't have time for that, and instead, we get pastries and coffee from other vendors in the market.
To Los Angeles Union Station immediately thereafter, so I can be there on time for the second train in my current itinerary. Suzanne would like to see the sleeper compartment I am inhabiting for seven days. I was surprised that the Amtrak person let her climb up there for a couple of minutes.
This train is The Coast Starlight, an extension of the extinct, the most glamorous train in the annals of the Southern Pacific Railroad in the days before Amtrak. The Daylight ran from Los Angeles to San Francisco, and was the most profitable train in the history of American railroading. Few trains ever made a profit at all. The demand remains. I hear that there's a plan to build a high-speed train from LA to SF in the near future.
The sleeping car in back of mine has a name: The George M. Pullman. He is the man who invented American rail passenger service as we know it. His company built the first fleet of Amtrak Superliner cars in the 1970s, then ended that enterprise permanently. (I can bore people with train trivia like this for hours, and there are guys who can beat me many times over at that.)
The first fifty or so miles north of Los Angeles take us past the the usual railroad scenery: junkyards, the backs of industrial buildings, and graffiti that seems all to have been painted by the same artist worldwide. I wonder if he and his followers know that their work more often than not dresses up the places where it's painted.
The scene changes to vast farms of vegetables and fruits. This is the source of most of the fresh vegetables sold in supermarkets across America. I make out spinach, pumpkins, tomatoes, and (in particularly horizon-challenging vistas) lettuce.
The train suddenly leaves the flatlands and veers into the Coastal Ranges, where the train punches through several long tunnels. It emerges with a 180 view of the Pacific Ocean. For hundreds of miles, this panorama varies from interesting and different to scenic and superbly beautiful. At times the train is on a cliff looking down at beaches far below, with hundreds of people scattered across the sand and in the ocean. For the first time in my life, I see actual surfers shooting the curl.
This train has a unique new service. It has a parlor car. That's an expression from the past--the Pullman Age, in fact. Sleeping car passengers, can get food different from that in the main dining car. It's served on tablecloth-covered tables, with real china instead of the plastic plates Amtrak uses in the dining car. Later in the afternoon, the parlor car hosts a wine tasting. After dinner, there's a movie. And except for the hour or so when we're in Vandenberg Air Force Base, the car even has WiFi.
I try the parlor car for lunch. The two choices are a Greek salad and an Italian sandwich that's about two-thirds of the way to being a muffuletta. I get the salad. Aside from being served with less than enough olive oil dressing, it's very fresh and good. Certainly better than the house salad's lettuce.
After awhile, we lose the view of the ocean. It's replaced by a Southwestern terrain that reminds me of the Big Bend country we passed through on the Sunset Limited a few days ago. So far, this is the finest vista I've seen from any train, with the exception of the California Zephyr in 1978. But many miles of great views lie along the tracks ahead of me.
Dinner in the dining car repeats the menu of my first night, when I was aboard the Sunset Limited. Once again, I get a tenderer rectangle of steak than I expect with a sauce incorporating red wine, demi-glace, and peppercorns. I dine with the same couple who were across from me at lunch.
I fire up an all-night program of baroque music on my laptop, and go to bed at around ten.
[title type="h5"]Sunday, August 23, 2014.
Aboard The Coast Starlight.
[/title]
I'm up around six. The baroque music is still playing, having serenaded me all night long. I dress and head to the dining car, which is nearly full of breakfasters. I have Railroad French Toast, the name of which has been on the menus of almost every train magic carpet made of steel in my ridership. Side order of bacon. Juice and coffee. My dining companions are retirees on their way to Seattle from San Francisco. They take the train all the time.
Back in my compartment, I commit to the screen a run of ideas that came to me in the middle of the night and early this morning before breakfast. I have a good grip on the story arc and the characters in my book. The more I think about it and the more I write, the better it reads. The strange force that makes fiction compose itself is here. And I have lots and lots of time to tend to it.
I liked the lunch in the parlor car enough yesterday that I returned there for today's midday meal. It is an "Italian sandwich," made of salami, ham, lettuce, tomatoes, and mayo on a focaccia. As I wrote yesterday, this seems like a failed effort to become a muffuletta, but it was good anyway.
Unfortunately, the parlor car is suffering from the same illness that dome cars have always had: the windows in the roof create a greenhouse effect, defeating the air conditioning except at one table on the car. (Fortunately, I know where that table is, and I grab it.) The problem is that this is a very old car, dating back to the 1950s trains on the Santa Fe. I think it's the oldest car on Amtrak these days.
The Coast Starlight tops its earlier visual offerings as it climbs through the Shasta mountains, with its magnificent trees, tumbling steams, flowers, and wilderness so wild that no cell service or internet is available. (And I'm glad of that.) This train remains in the running for My Best Ever list.
[caption id="attachment_48704" align="alignnone" width="480"]
Klamath Falls.[/caption]
We arrive at Klamath Falls, Oregon in mid-morning. It's a short stop--the train is running a bit late. But I do have time to get out of the car and onto the ground. That action checks Oregon off my life list of United States. That leaves me with Idaho, Montana, and both Dakotas unwalked. When I'm on the Empire Builder later this week, I have opportunities to touch down in Idaho, Montana and North Dakota. I will still be missing South Dakota, which has no passenger trains. Maybe I will get there when I attempt to drive the old Jefferson Highway from New Orleans to Winnepeg next summer.
The Coast Starlight manages to make up all its lateness and arrives on time. Doesn't that figure. Mary Ann's sister Colleen believes that the train won't arrive until nine-thirty, because that's what I told her when the train was running late. I stand around the station, whose human population is dwindling. It's also getting dark. Colleen can't find her way to where I am. I ask a group of four cab drivers to explain this. Each of them gives me a different answer.
But Colleen does ultimately find me. She drives us directly home, where her husband Mark is relaxing at the end of a day working at the zoo. They have a large and comfortable guest room in the basement, with a private bathroom. I take a quick shower and, at a little after midnight New Orleans time, I conk out in a bed that doesn't constantly move, the way it does on the train.
[title type="h5"]Monday, August 24, 2015.
Exploring Seattle. [/title]
Mary Ann's sister Colleen has everything I like waiting for me--notably coffee and chicory and milk to heat for café au lait. She has just hosted one of her other sisters and her family as they made their way to Alaska for a cruise. Mary Ann was recently in residence here, too. But Colleen says that after nine years of living in their present home, this is the first time she's had any house guests. Famine or feast!
She suggests we have breakfast at a favorite little pastry shop nearby. We return so I can get a few pieces of business taken care of. Overnight I had a few good ideas for the writing project, and I want to get them down on paper before I forget what they were.
[caption id="attachment_48702" align="alignnone" width="480"]
The original Starbucks.[/caption]
Seattle is a city I've never visited before, even though I have three friends or relatives who live there. I know it's prosperous, modern, and a little dull. But it has its charms. When she was here a few weeks ago, Mary Ann was thrilled by the Pike Street Market that runs along the water's edge in downtown Seattle. Somebody told me that the very first Starbucks was on Pike Street. I told Colleen that if indeed it was the first, then there will certainly be a long line in front of it. Yep--at least forty people, jamming their way into a very small shop. And for what?
Something else that grabbed Mary Ann was the Beecher Cheese shop. The making of cheese from scratch was in progress. MA told me to try some fresh cheese curds, which, she said, will squeak when I chewed them. They didn't, but, okay, I did it. I did like the smoked cheese, which coincidentally was one of the two specials for dinner last night in the Coast Starlight's Parlor last night. Macaroni and Beecher smoked cheese, to be exact. I got a wedge of that and two other Beecher cheeses. I will forget them tomorrow in Colleen's refrigerator. I hope she likes good cheeses.
I can't get out of my mind that the expression "Beecher Cheese" sounds like a euphemism for. . . well, never mind.
[caption id="attachment_48701" align="alignnone" width="480"]
Seafood purveyor in the Seattle open market.[/caption]
The indoor market across the street from the Pike Street shops and cafes presents an enormous range of merchandise, from crafts and art to fresh fruit, meat and vegetables. Many of the food merchants's displays front small cafes where you can sit down and see how their edibles are when cooked and eaten.
Of all I tasted, the best item was a sliver of a peach that a merchant sliced off a whole peach. It was at a spectacular peak of flavor, such that I've never before tasted. Colleen has a peach tree in her year, and tells me that this is the time of year for Washington State peaches. I believe!
After more than an hour in the market, we walk through the the Seattle downtown, all the way to the train station neither of us could locate precisely last night, when I was actually in the place!) The streets heading toward the waterfront are steep, and both of us are panting from the effort. But I am very happy to get this or any exercise today. Almost nothing is as sedentary as a multi-day ride in a train.
[title type="h5"]Tuesday, August 25, 2015.
A Great Seattle Eatery.[/title]
Yesterday I heard from Fay, my sister's husband's sister. What does that make her to me? The Italians probably have a specific word for it. Fay and her husband Bill have lived in Seattle for decades. I remember her very well from before they moved, as a funny, friendly person. But yesterday Bill came down with something and he wanted looked at by a doctor, instead of having lunch or dinner with me.
[caption id="attachment_48697" align="alignnone" width="480"]
Chinook in Seattle.[/caption]
But Fay gave me some good advice: a seafood restaurant called Chinook's. Neither Colleen nor Mark knew it, but they recognized the name of its parent company, a regional chain restaurant called Anthony's. Not much about Chinook's suggested a chain. It's named for a variety of Pacific salmon, and fulfills that suggestion by having a generous assortment of local fish: halibut, three kinds of salmon, petrale sole (a small flounder popular in San Francisco), Dungeness crab, Pacific cod and Pacific oysters.
I begin with a good oyster stew. I pass on barbecue shrimp New Orleans style (I didn't have the guts to check that out, but the very mention of New Orleans creates credibility).
We eat everything else mentioned above, and except for the inevitable underuse of seasonings, it is all good, fresh eats. Mark's order brought forth an ancient dish called a Hangtown fry--an omlette made with fried oysters, fried ham, cheese, and a few variations. It's a San Francisco concoction that sounds a lot better than it is--although Mark liked it well enough. Both he and Colleen seem to be impressed by the place. I know I was. It's the first West Coast fish restaurant that was both imbued with that local seafood and good.
[title type="h5"]
Tuesday, August 25, 2015.
The Seattle Burbs. [/title]
Colleen took two days off from work to act as my tour guide to Seattle. Today, after I make sure the Menu Daily came out on time, and after I write down a few notes, phrases, and paragraphs from my book in progress, we go to a charming little town called Edmonds. She wants to have breakfast again, but we are running late for that meal, in a place she's interested in called Chanterelle. She's not dined there before, but she likes the look of the place.
We are served by a smiling, congenial blonde who gives us what sounds like good advice as to the best dishes. Colleen has a chicken panini and I have what they claim to be the ultimate grilled cheese sandwich with a cup of the ultimate tomato bisque. Neither of these lived up to its promises. Even Colleen, who I have never before heard complain, said that she could tell by just looking that the grilled cheese was overrated.
Oh, well. We leave the place and walk around Edmonds. The downtown center is a large pier from which an enormous ferry takes cars and passengers to an island in the sound, about three miles away. We missed the boarding, but walk around the area on the piers, shooting the breeze with old fishermen, some of whom are pulling what looked to me like appetizing catches from the water. On the shore was a brown sandy beach riddled with kids and their parents. Colleen wondered how the kids--many of whom were little--could possibly stand the cold water. But none of them seemed unhappy about being there.
We walk around for an hour or so, then stop for coffee at, in contrast with the one we found yesterday, a new-looking Starbucks. Seattle is the birthplace of Starbucks, isn't it?
[caption id="attachment_48699" align="alignnone" width="480"]
Train station in Seattle.[/caption]
Colleen takes us back home, where my bags are waiting. My train leaves at a quarter to five, and traffic downtown was so heavy that there was an off-chance that we wouldn't make it. I needn't have sweated that. The incoming Empire Builder is two and a half hours late getting in.
[title type="h3"]Back To Part 1, Backstory: A Box Of Trains[/title]
[title type="h3"]Back To Part 2, New Orleans to Los Angeles[/title]
[title type="h3"]Back To Part 3, Hanging Out In Los Angeles[/title]
[title type="h3"]Back To Part 4, Los Angeles to Seattle[/title]
[title type="h3"]To Part 5, Seattle to Chicago to New Orleans[/title]
[title type="h3"]To Part 5, Seattle to Chicago to New Orleans[/title]
