Going to Colorado for Christmas

One year we left the cheery confines of Northern California to venture East to experience Colorado Christmas in Palisade.
Gandma and Grandpa owned and lived on a 40 acre peach orchard farm. Formed from rocky sandy soil of a bench plateau from flooded ancient years of the Colorado River, this farm despite its rocks, was perfect soil for raising peaches.
In the winter the peaches slept in somber hibernated states. Gathering up the required hours of cold to allow for a perfect bloom season.
After school was out in California, our parents gathered us up. The us was a 4 year old sister and myself a post kindergarten 7 year old.
My sister screamed and cried when the giant passenger train released its breaks to slide into position in Oakland.
We had taken the ferry across the bay to board the California Zepher. it was known for its "vista dome." A huge upstairs addition to the cars, allowed the passengers the ability to"sight see" with its huge window and broad chairs. A version of it may be seen as part of the California Adventure entryway in Anaheim.
As a 7 year old this was as close to nirvana as it gets. There were steep steps to climb, there as a slight chance of some unsupervised freedom. There was a water dispenser with paper cone cups and a chance to see the landscape as the train moved along. These seats did not belong to any given passenger, They were"extra" seats.
Mom and dad were mostly staying in the home base seats on the ground level. My sister and I were amazed at the African American porters that serviced the rail cars. They cleaned and tidied up the living area. A conductor had a a little table in the back that he managed the ticket part of the journey. People would get off and on at various stops along the way. He marshaled the almighty hand punch that verified that the ticket was indeed used. He also made sure where the people that had stops along the way were seated. In the commission of job he had time to stop and converse with the passengers. Other passengers in a much more relaxed era than now could also converse with each other. Some people brought bags of snacks on the train.
Dinner reservations were obtained from the porters. A reservation was made for dinning car spots. They were all "make a table" arrangements which meant that you never knew whom you would be sitting with. The reservations for the earlier times, also came with menu choices that were less expensive. A favorite of mine was salsbury steak.
Salsbury steak is a thick hamburger/meatloaf entree that is covered with gravy and served with mashed potatoes and a vegetable.
The dinning car, which was usually in the middle of the train had seats that faced each other in a both arrangement. To get there, all passengers had to move from train car to train car through the noisy transition covers. These were particularly scary to a 7 year old. The transitional plates slid back and forth as you made your way from car to car. I was sure that my legs would be sliced off if I missed the plate as we stepped from car to car in this exciting transition. In the mean time the train was always sliding back and forth and the sound of the train being pulled down the track form the outside was imminently engaging.
The Western Pacific was the train route. It moved through the valley to Sacramento and then headed up the feather river route to cross the Sierras in a pass that was mainly for the train and not a heavily used car route. The Western Pacific railroad would take us all the way to Salt Lake City. At that point the Rio Grande railroad would hitch its locomotives to the Zephyr and head it East through Utah and into Colorado.
I remember the route as being full of pine trees. I was up in the vista dome when somewhere in the foothills we made a huge circle around and could see both ends of the train at once.
We rolled out of the Sierras at Pyramid lake. It is an ancient desolate lake. It connected us with the outskirts of Sparks Nevada where it was clearly dark and we were headed through the dessert into our middle of the night arrival in icy Salt Lake City.
Snow was on the ground most of the way from Sparks to Salt Lake City. Snow is not a regular visitor in South San Francico.. so this was an amazing thing to see for me.
More on the trip to Colorado in later installments:  Pat