It’s important to note that I almost skipped this. After Sunday, and the decidedly NOT FREE Crocker, I was
worried about the expense of renting the car and getting in and parking and
everything, and plus I’m a bit of a baby. The whole bus experience did not put
me in the best of moods, and I was driving up into the very misty mountains,
and my phone was dying, so I was worried about getting lost. Overall, though,
this has probably been my favorite thing, and I’m really glad Mom talked me
into still doing it.
At first glance, I was pretty sure this was going to be a
letdown. The parking lot was practically empty—again, the weather was scaring a
lot of Californians. There was alternating mist and actual drops, but it never
did more than drizzle. It was chilly, though, and I was mad I wasn’t wearing
pants. Most of the attractions were closed down. There was a candle maker I had
wanted to visit, even though it was clearly for little kids. They were closed.
The food hut was open, as was the gift shop. That was about it. I had about an
hour and a half to wait, so I read Murder
on the Orient Express and tried to get excited. When that didn’t work, I
walked down to the state park that was right next to the Railroad. I found a
sign that said “Mountain Lions attack without warning!” I decided I’d go back
to the railroad. A tour group from PA showed up, and I tried to talk to some of
them, but they weren’t interested and went back to their own little lives.
There was an older woman who told me they were from Clayburn, and then
explained all of the places outside of Philadelphia that was kind of near to,
since most people don’t know Clayburn. I tried to say I was from both
Pittsburgh and Delaware, and she just said “Oh.” They all got the last two cars
of the train, and the general population around me was very angry. One
woman—once again, there with her children and her parents!—was telling anyone
who would listen that no one was supposed to be able to reserve cars. I
couldn’t understand why they were so upset about it, because there was plenty
of room for everyone, and I thought all of the seats were pretty equal. But
whatever.
Once we were on the train and out of the rain, our conductor
started telling us facts about the train, the area, the redwoods, railroad
history, all of it. He was funny, with a dry humor that I appreciated. He
explained as we went over a 40 foot trestle bridge that this was the spot where
they threw people off if they didn’t have tickets. Boys, girls, young, old,
even Yetis. I loved it.
I left right after the trip because everything was shut
down, but I got to see them “gas up” the engine twice. Just like in those olden
days, we stopped under a water tower, and a pipe came down and they filled the
engine up with water. I left feeling really happy. I enjoyed just going through
the woods and hearing the facts, some of which I’ll post later once I get them
all transcribed, and there is a sort of simple joy in being shown around. While
I found the redwoods pretty, they weren’t as awe inspiring as I thought they
might be. Still I felt pretty happy as I went down the mountain.
I returned my rental car, and I was told I could get a ride
to the train station. I told the woman that I needed to be there by 5:30, the
time of my train. It was 4:45 when I got in to the rental station. I missed my
train. I was so frustrated trying to get out of San Jose. My phone was
completely dead, so I couldn’t call Rachel and tell her I’d be late to the
Menlo Park station. It was going to take me close to an hour to get home, and
then next train didn’t come until 6:23. I got in around 7:10; Rachel and I did
a food truck for dinner, and I went home to de-stress.
I did try to get pictures of myself with redwoods.
Unfortunately, the people I asked to get pictures had no idea how to take a
picture, so there is a lot of me and the group, and the whole scale of the
redwood is kind of lost. I got a lot of pictures of trunks. Generally, the
pictures didn’t work on the train. The thing that was so great about it was
just being in the forest. The train did what’s called a switchback up the
mountain; the engine pulls us up to a certain point, and then they switch the
rails so that we end up on another track. The locomotive is then at the end of
the train, and pushes it up the hill. Once we’re all the way up, we switch
again, and the locomotive pulls. The people next to me could not comprehend
this maneuver, so it took a bit to explain it to them. And again, at the top of
the mountain, we went around in a circle, so they had to flip a switch to
change the rails. However, we had an opportunity halfway around to get out and
wander. When we got back in, the group next to me switched sides, because they
wanted to see the other side of the trip. I explained to them that they didn’t need
to; since we were going around in a circle, we would naturally be switched.
That also didn’t make sense to them.
I would like to point out that these two maneuvers made
complete sense to me, and did not have to be explained at all. The same for the trip back from Sacramento. I
just naturally got that I should sit on the same side of the train to see the
other side of everything that I missed. Me. The girl who stood at Bus Stop 68
for bus 23, who went East instead of West, and who stood on the wrong side of
the street for a good seven minutes before figuring it out. And these things
happened, independent of each other, less than three hours apart.
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