Post-trail: Week 1, The Coast Starlight Train

How do you get home after a thru-hike? I think the majority of folks will take a flight. Which makes sense: it's fast, it's efficient, and it can go pretty much anywhere, including overseas. But for me, I always figured I'd take a train. And I admit a large part of it is an overly romanticized notion of looking out the window, watching the world go by, and just feeling that sense of perpetual movement that you don't get from a plane (a plane is too far from the ground, so that while I know intellectually that I'm moving--and moving fast--and technically can see it, I can't viscerally feel it). 

And another large part was so I didn't have to check-in my backpack: just the thought of the straps catching on the carousel makes my skin crawl. (So there's a solution to that, which involves putting your backpack in a large compactor bag and properly sealing the top but still, why risk it?)

And so it was that I found myself aboard Amtrak's Coast Starlight, on a 2-day train ride from Seattle to Los Angeles. I booked a business-class ticket--the sleeper cars were much much more expensive--and booked it for a Friday departure, because if I had done a Thursday departure (as originally planned), then I would have arrived in LA on Friday night and felt compelled to go hiking on Saturday (because that's what I *do* on Saturdays: I hike).

Let me get the negatives out of the way up front. First, due to COVID, the dining car was closed (except to folks in the sleeper cars, since meals are included as part of their ticket) so I ate out of the cafe in the observation car, which basically served "stuff from the microwave". Reheated scrambled eggs in a small plastic dish, burgers only marginally more hefty than the standard McDonald's hamburger and just as bare, pizzas that come entombed in shrinkwrap. And plenty of peanut M&Ms. It reminded me of Seiad Valley, but with *less* ice cream and fruit. And it was expensive to boot! Luckily I had bought some snacks in Seattle and brought them aboard, and every time we hit a station with some time to kill I'd go out and refill my two 1 L Smartwater bottles but, yeah, if I'd intended to start eating conscientiously after the trail, this wasn't the place to do it! Second, I was pretty tired, and I found that the seats--while they do recline--are hard to sleep in. I tried to do the airplane thing of laying back and sleeping, but that always seemed to strain my neck--probably needed a neck pillow. Instead, since I got two adjacent seats, I slept curled up across those. There are footrests that pull up from under the seat--like on an armchair at home--and I pulled those out to form a little shelf that I could just fit in if I curled up in a little foetal ball. Which might have been fine but my legs were just getting over cramping up all week--the one benefit of all the salt from the cafe!--so I would sleep for a couple hours, then wake up when my position got stale, fully wake up as I spent half an hour finding a new position, before finally falling back asleep. So the trip wasn't that restful either, and I spent much of it debating whether to fight to stay awake--to see the scenery--or to fight to try and get a bit of sleep. Third, due to COVID, all passengers were required to wear masks at all times except when "actively eating or drinking". I mostly followed this directive, although it meant I ate a lot of foodstuffs composed of a myriad of individual pieces--like peanuts or goldfish crackers--deliberately munching them one piece at a time. Otherwise, I kept the mask on except when I slept at night (when I pulled the hood of my puffy-become-blanket over my face) and when I was in the bathroom (because, why?).

But other than those inconveniences, the train ride was nice. The first day the train passed through Washington and Oregon, and from Seattle to Portland there were a couple of volunteer Forest Service rangers in the observation car who would highlight the places we passed through and often tell stories. Like how the town of Vader, Washington, was named after a prominent member of the town, only they named it after him while he was still alive, and he was so offended that he promptly moved away. Or how Longview, Washington, has a squirrel bridge--first built by a local when he lamented squirrels getting killed crossing a main thoroughfare--and has since added enough additional squirrel bridges that they now celebrate Squirrelfest every year. Or how the Olympia-Lacey train station was entirely built, and is entirely staffed, by volunteers, after one wheelchaired passenger got off the train in the 1980s to an empty wooden shack with no public transportation, no phones, and a potholed parking lot, and  waited for hours in the dark before getting help, and the town realized, we're better than that!

But for me, I mostly just watched the landscape go by. And it looked much different than what I'd seen on the trail. Here there were more little towns and fields--areas more rural than remote--which was expected. What I did not expect is that the train crosses over more full rivers, which you don't get to see as much on the trail because how are you going to cross a full river? But here you just build a bridge and you'll be seeing trees trees trees and then they'll break and you'll see the water coursing underneath you. Nonetheless, the rivers were my connection back to the trail: the all seemed to ultimately come from glaciers on the various mountains to the east, mountains which the PCT often hikes around. In fact, as we came into Portland the day was clear enough that the rangers pointed out--with pleasant surprise--the slopes of Mount Hood jutting out to the eastern horizon, and I thought to myself, hey, yeah, I walked around the base of that!

As for Oregon, the train ride only confirmed that it is, indeed, woods, woods, and more woods. And the occasional river. The train actually crossed the PCT near Shelter Cove, and I was eager to get a glimpse of the trail as we passed. Because I remembered a YouTube video from the Whimsical Woman, where after finishing the PCT she drove from South Lake Tahoe to her job in Seattle, and crossed the PCT along the way. And she stopped and got out of the car and looked at the trail walking away from the parking lot before curving towards the mountains, and she started crying, asking, what am I doing? I belong *there*, on the trail, *that's* home. And my backpack is just in the car, and all my gear too, I could just pull it back on and head down the trail, and then set up my tent for the night. And I think that's when the emotion of the trail really being over hit her. But for me, it was full night by the time we crossed the trail at Shelter Cove, and dark, and all I saw was the lights from inside the train, reflected back at me, and all I felt was sleepy.

The next day was California and here I woke to now golden hills. After watching the sun rise as we passed Sacramento, I was struck by just how dry California is. Especially after the greenery of mid-Oregon just last dusk, to now return to grass and brush was quite a shock. And for a moment I wondered: I had been looking forward to hiking some of my old haunts in the Santa Anas of Cleveland National, which would be even more south and so even more dry and hot than here. Would I even be able to hold up? Or would I wither in the heat? I had prided myself on my ability to stand the heat in the desert, but that was many many miles, and many many biomes, ago. But on the other hand, this was home--chaparral and heat and exposure and all--and as Otter once said, you can adapt to anything. And surely that applies to home!

The real treat of the California leg of the ride, though, came later: in the section between San Luis Obispo and Santa Barbara, the train starts riding along the coast. As in closer to the coast than the freeway: it basically rides the cliffs just above the beaches below. When we first came to this section, it was a foggy day over the ocean, the low clouds obscuring the water except where the train passed shallow canyon formed between bluffs, and we could see a bit of ocean, gray and white-lined by wave-top. But luckily as we went the fog eventually lifted, and we could see out even as the sun started setting. Which was, naturally, beautiful, although if you wanted to see the *really* beautiful stuff, I'd recommend not just look *out* over the ocean, but turning your eyes *forward* or *backward* and looking along the tracks, seeing the cliffs and shoreline zig-zagging in and out as the golden light of the fading day highlights the crags against the choppy sheen of the water.

Yeah: it's pretty!

And with that last spectacular hurrah, the train continued into night and eventually to its last stop at Union Station. And I caught an Uber from there down to Orange County with Brad, who does Uber as a side gig, his main job being coaching youth basketball in Torrance. And I got back to the apartment and unlocked my own door and walked into my own place, strangely clean but smelling of that empty dust that permeates unused places, and just like that, I was home and my PCT trip was, at last, over.

At this point, I do want to take a moment to thank the folks who helped me along this way, and especially to Ian and Terry, who helped me with my resupply along the trail, and to Dan, who kept track of my apartment and car while I was away (and who surprised me that one time out by Ebbetts Pass). In a sense hiking the trail is fundamentally an individual thing: no one can take each of the millions of steps but you yourself. But in another sense, it really isn't: I, at least, relied on a lot of other people. And not just on the physical side of things: Ian and Terry, dealing as they did with logistics--the part of the trail I enjoyed least (Catch was right)--also got the brunt of a lot of my negativity (as is seen at times in these blog entries as well). As Marina mentioned, that's one of the hard parts of doing the trail alone--you don't have anybody to complain to, to air those things out (and, strangely, just airing them out does make it a bit easier to live with them). That's one of the benefits of hiking in a consistent group: other hikers become the people you kvetch with, and as they're sharing the same experiences as you are, they tend to understand where you're coming from pretty well. But I never got that consistent group, so instead I would tend to kvetch to Ian and Terry. Which was ultimately helpful for me, but likely a bit disconcerting for them! So thanks to them for taking all that!

And that--for the final time for the PCT--was the hike!

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Some notes:

-- When I got to Union Station, I initially looked to get a ride on Lyft, but those turned out to be $120 to $140 for the ride down to Irvine! So I checked Uber, which was $50 to $60. Not sure how those two end up with such different numbers--there should be plenty of riders and drivers on a Saturday night in downtown LA, and they're both providing what is for all intents and purposes the same service, so how can there be a 2X cost differential? Anyway, the lesson for me, the simple rider, is to always check both services before booking!