And the Grand Canyon Railroad trip back
These travels occurred in late September/early October 2021. The posts are gathered under the ‘Travel’ category (top right of page) and numbered to indicate the order in which they should be read.
Post 14
The previous post included most of the Grand Canyon pictures with a few more attached here. After walking about 3 miles along the South Rim Path I was pretty tired. I walk about 3 miles a day, 4-5 days a week at home and I can’t handle 3 miles today? Then I realize much of this walk is up and down paths along the rim and at 7000 feet elevation. Ok, that makes me feel better, but I should check the scale when I get back.
We board the Grand Canyon Railway train for the trip back to Williams and that cowboy hotel. Oh, I forgot to mention that yesterday on the way up one of the cowboys from the corny cowboy show came into our car to play a guitar and sing some train related songs. It was entertaining and a nice break from the 2 hour train ride. Today on our return to Williams AZ, we were entertained by another cowboy crooner playing guitar and singing songs related to the old west. One of the songs was “Ghost riders in the sky” and a lot of the passengers sang along with him. You just started to hum that song didn’t you? Go ahead, finish it. We’ll wait.
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We finally see a small herd of elk grazing track side, but since they are all facing away from us they are actually mooning us! To keep these posts PG I have not included a picture. Well, that and the fact that I couldn’t get the phone positioned fast enough to actually take a picture…
I KNEW IT!
I KNEW THERE WAS A POSSIBILITY!
I KNEW IT!!!
Sorry for yelling, folks. But I knew there was a chance. In Post 2 from a while back, I mentioned the possibilities of desperadoes using a gulch to hide in while planning a train robbery. And I was assured Mother Amtrak had taken sufficient security precautions to avoid that. But today we are on The Grand Canyon Railway, not Amtrak. Well, it turns out that The Cataract Creek gang broke out of their assisted living facility and robbed our train as we headed back from The Very Grande Canyon. We saw two bad guys chasing alongside the train on horseback and well, yeah, the train had to stop so they could board safely.
And some of the gang looked an awful lot like the guys in the corny cowboy show from yesterday morning and our cowboy minstrels on the train. Fortunately, our train car attendant had told us that we were scheduled to be robbed about 5 PM and when the doddering desperadoes came into our car we were told put our hands up (with a suitable foldable tip in hand, of course) and hope they leave peacefully. Then when the marshal came in a few moments later we were all asked to point to the back of the car and say, “They went thataway!”. The Marshall would then proceed to round up the entire Cataract Creek Gang and get them back to the home in time for supper.
Back to the hotel, dinner, and an early bedtime because our bus leaves at 3 AM to get us back to meet our 4:20 train to Chicago. As we travelled through Arizona we watched the sun rise then crossed into New Mexico and lost an hour there somewhere with the time change.
In Albuquerque we had a 50 minute stop. While there an Amtrak employee arrived with a very long-handled window washing tool and cleaned the upper and lower windows on the train. No drive through train wash, but he did a good job. Oh, and I posted pics of the onboard train menu. Those are your choices for however long you are on the train. The choices are both tasty and filling.
Aggressive Retirement 