Train to the Grand Canyon

“Grandad, what did you do for the Global Climate Strike Day in 2023?” “Well, I stood in the rain on Route 66 in Flagstaff with amost a dozen other damp people”. “Ah, it must have seemed not enough, Grandad. And to think it was only a few years before the world uprising that put paid to corporate power and began the road to heal our relationship with the planet.”

Choo choo. The train hooter is seriously just like that. And the track goes on and on and on. Through breakfast, lunch and dinner, through the night and on again. 48 hours from Chicago to San Francisco, or more if you take a break at Flagstaff to see one of the seven wonders of the world.

I think I’ll let the pictures speak for themselves, I'm not feeling in communication mode, just get it down and get it out! First the train. See the double decker, the observation car, the er huge roomette, the night-time train-joining, the grand Union station, and the tasty menu.

And the Grand Canyon... hard to say how astonishing it is, and how vastly bigger than any view of it. I've included a map I found after I'd been, and it only then stuck with me that it isn't one sunken mega-canyon but a winding mega-canyon, a 270 mile snaking thing with big side creeks and mountains within it. I went on a tour that stopped at maybe 5 places, and only from one could you see the River Colorado far away at the bottom.

It is of course sacred to the native american tribes, who now run a lot of the unproductive land around it, but not the national park itself. Here's a picture of the ruins of one of many pueblos. Towns, not teepees, but nonetheless temporary as communities followed the food.